Careful what you wish for - Prayers needed!

Thursday night I wrote that I wish Aaron would start working out. Well Friday he was laid off from work so it looks as though he will have plenty of spare time on his hands to begin that work out regimen. Damn! This came as a shock. Everyone got it on the crew except the foreman. With this economy it appears it may be quite awhile before anyone has any work. Please pray that he goes back to work soon. I am most upset that I just purchased our tickets to FL and planned a week vacation. Oh well. We really do want to go see my brother but if I had to choose between food on the table in a few months or a nice leisurely visit with Tony I suppose food would win. Please pray for our family.

N was invited to his best friends birthday party last night. The celebrated with a pool party at a local hotel, stayed overnight in the bunk bed room with three other little buddies. This morning they ate breakfast, took another swim, and then played arcade games until their hair dried. He had a great time but he's a little sleepy right now from staying up way past bedtime so I am trying to convince him to lay down with me for a little nap. I am afraid of lying down because I got up and went to spin class and boot camp this morning. I'm thinking my legs may be really sore if I sit in one place too long. Wish me luck!

Frigid Cold

Well today seems like a very appropriate day to show our appreciation for our upcoming family vacation!! I think it felt like -40 below yesterday, YIKES! We leave for Florida to visit my little brother in 40 days! We are so excited. N and I made a calendar similar to the advent one(Santa's beard that was posted earlier). We place a jack-o-lantern sticker in one of the squares on the calendar each night after supper. I don't know how we ended up with an abundance of Halloween stickers but since they are in great supply that's what we are using. I wanted to post a picture of it but my usb cable is missing ????? Not sure how that went missing exactly but it is MIA. Anyway, we are counting down the days until we take our first airplane ride as a family to visit uncle Tony as well as the days until N's 5th birthday! We will be in Florida the last week of February - the first week in March, we will return and then N turns 5 on the 14th. It is so hard to believe that my little baby will turn 5 and will be going off to Kindergarten this year!

Besides staying warm nothing too exciting is going on. I started a spinning class last Friday during lunch, I did it again Saturday morning and again Tuesday during lunch and my bottom is sore!! If this continues I will definitely be purchasing shorts with padding built in. :) I am trying to get Aaron to the gym...I'm hoping that all of the exercise will cause him to begin hacking up disgusting yellow and green stuff so he will quit smoking. He would KILL me if he knew I wrote that but oh well, it's still my wish.

Uneventful week

We have had a pretty uneventful week other than hearing the news about baby Taylor and Sally Mae. Please keep both of these dear little girls in your heart, thoughts, and prayers.

We took the kids out to eat Friday night on a gift card we received at Christmas from uncle Chris! Yea! Always nice when fun is free! We rented a few movies (Eagle Eye, Fool's Gold, The Happening and Diego). N had a friend from preschool spend the night Saturday night. This was the first sleep over he has had and it was great. They played so well. I didn't sleep very sound, I kept waking up...listening to make sure our friend didn't wake up scared. But no need to worry. The boys went to bed about a half hour after normal bedtime and slept in a little this morning.

N has to take treats to school tomorrow. He is taking carrots with ranch, cheese cubes and crackers...nothing to creative but at least it's healthy. In addition it's his sharing day so he has to choose something that begins with the 'sound of the week' to take to school and show his classmates. I better go find his newsletter to figure out what the 'sound of the week' is.

Please Pray for Taylor

Taylor is the 4 month old daughter of Jeff and Tammy, she needs everyone praying for her. I went to school with her father and I am friends with Tim (Jeff's younger brother) and his wife Jaime. Please click over and read Taylor's story and pray for her. PLEASE pass this along to all of your prayer circles.

Finishing up December

The kids enjoy going outside for five minutes while mom or dad shovels the driveways. This is N teaching H how to make snow angels. And N sitting on the sled (probably pushing sister off).

We have gone to the "Lighted Holiday" parade the last two years. We enjoy dinner afterwards with Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Alaina, "George", and Great Grandma and Grandpa! It's always an enjoyable evening.

Here's H sporting her favorite gift! A PUPLE princess dress from Uncle Tony! She received it in the mail right before we had to leave for N's Preschool Christmas program. I had to pry it off of her.

For New Year's Eve Aaron and I went to dinner at La Tavola, a little Italian restaurant, here in B-town and then had a few friends over to play games. New Year's Day we watched the Iowa game! What a game! I hope Ferentz does not leave. I also enjoyed text message pictures from my brother who was at the game. Overall we lounged around, played games and took naps. Later in the evening we went to visit the Stimpson's and little M, ordered pizza, and played Wii. A great start to a New Year!

We enjoyed a very happy, healthy, and safe year. We are extremely blessed with wonderful, family and friends. Not to mention our absolutely adorable children. They light up our day. I love the great snuggles, kisses, and funny things they say! They are becoming little buddies which brings tears to my eyes every time I catch them playing nicely together or snuggling. I hope this lasts a lifetime! This year I hope for more of the same. I pray for our HEALTH, I pray that H continues to eat well and grow, with those two things life couldn't be any better.

Well except I do strongly pray that we get more on track with Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover so we can live debt free! Watch out student loans, you should be afraid! It is a lot of fun to have so many friend's and family members that are Ramsey fans too. Oh yea, and just one more thing...15 lbs. lighter too!

Holiday Baking Fun

We made goodies galore. The kids and I made red velvet cake balls (YUM!), puppy chow and then we baked sugar cookies, and chocolate star cookies. Yes, our frosting is fushia, aqua, purple and neon orange. I let go of my OCD long enough to let them enjoy the holiday season too :)

This little gadget was awesome for the kids. I found a four pack of them at a Pampered Chef party. I just filled it full of frosting and let the kids squeeze it on!

We only had a few cookie misfits that made it to "cookie heaven" aka "Mom's Belly"

I think they did an outstanding job. I definitely need a better sugar cookie frosting recipe. I have tried several different recipes and nothing seems to be stiff enough so if you have any great recipes to share please send them my way!

We had our second annual "girls baking night" at our house on December 19th. A group of my good friends and I get together once a month and hang out. We started this tradition last year in December and we got together each month for fun and laughter. This year we started baking around 5:30 and finished before midnight. Aaron and the kiddos stayed all night at Grandma and Grandpa's so we could stay up late and get everything accomplished. We made cake balls, puppy chow, chocolate star cookies, Special K wreaths, chex mix, snicker doodles, and monster cookies. It seems like I am forgetting one other thing. But anyway we made enough so we all had goodies to take to our holiday festivities. We plan to do it on Saturday next year. Since we are getting "older" it is hard to stay up that late.

We made a Gingerbread house. This was our first attempt. It was a ton of fun. I think they enjoyed licking the frosting and gobbling down sugar as fast as they could more than anything. Aaron was just as bad. I caught him peeling gum drops off the house for a week :)




We love the Disney commercial around our house you know the one... "I'm too excited to sleep". Well let's just say that poor little N inherited his Mom's excitement gene. I think he asked on an hourly basis when Christmas would be here. This started the day we returned home from Thanksgiving. He got pretty tricky and started to ask it in code. "When would it be baby Jesus' birthday?", "When would we go to Grandma A's?", "When could we go play the Wii at Grandpa B's"...you get the idea. We would have to count on the calendar over and over again. So one night we made this. And yes my creative gene was turned off or at least over powered by my excitement gene, but hey it worked. We cut everything out of construction paper, used an old red button off something from my Target days, and there you have it our very own Advent calendar. We made one for our cousin Sophia and Grandma A as well (we had lots of old red buttons).

Preschool Program

Wednesday Dec 17th we had N's Christmas program. He did a fabulous job. He was a mouse. A cat chased he and his mice cohorts through the toy shop, they tripped on a major machine plug and all of the power stopped working. The elves were very disappointed that they wouldn't be able to get all of the gifts made in time to load Santa's sleigh. The mice had a great idea!! They would go back through the toy shop and try to plug the machine back in. Problem solved. The elves cheered and Santa was able to leave just in time to make it to all of the good little boys and girl's homes.

Here he is crying since Christmas might be ruined.