Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Tuesday

Josiah is back to work.

Krista and Bre have had conversations with folks from Master's. They also organized everyone to play a game of Dominoes....and we watched a Samantha movie. Krista had taped 3 of the American Girl movies for Arielle for Christmas.

I dried apples, baked 4 loaves of bread and made dinner.

The youngers played all sorts of games, enjoyed the trampoline and had fun with the girls.

Krista figured out how to get CD's to load to the ipods.

Bre hooked up the card reader from the crashed computer to THIS computer. The reader on this computer seems to have gone out. When she did that for some STRANGE reason one of the color printers began to work. Who knows???? At one point she had the wireless mouse from the crashed computer controlling the screen on this computer...but that seems to have resolved itself.

ARGH....IE7 updated just fine on this computer but something went wrong when the other computer was upgrading and now we have Internet on ONE computer....I need to figure out how to blow the IE out and try it all over....but since we can't get online at all on that computer I have no idea how to download it. LOL Anyway - they can't go to the itunes store until we can get the computers to work well.

I typed some entries to post but the photos won't load, so I'll try tomorrow a.m.

That's the day in a nutshell.
Recipes: I realized how valuable it is to have favorite recipes on the blog when I couldn't find several I needed and had to copy them from the blog. ::snort:: Expect several in the next few days.

Menus:

Monday - Chicken Divan, Salad, fruit

Tuesday - Oven Fried chicken, oven fries, salad, carrot sticks, fruit

Wed - Beef Stroganoff, penne, salad, fruit salad, corn

Thursday - BBQ meatballs, rice, salad, fruit, oven baked sweet potato fries/fries

Friday - Pizza, salad, fruit

Saturday - Encore or Eat Out

Sunday - girls leave - most likely Encore Presentation and move our weekly eat out to Saturday.....

I CAN'T GET PHOTOS TO UPLOAD TONIGHT...JUST A WHINE! lol
Rocking Chair



Jamin and Jared bought me a rocking chair to match the one Mike bought me for Mother's Day. I'm excited to have matching chairs on the front "porch" and soon.....someone to rock with in the evenings.

Jamin spent the night assembling the rocking chair....
The Makeup Bandit

The girls are having to relearn survival in a big family techiniques....but Stacia is quick to return the things she borrows....{g}



Christmas Photos

No, I won't show photos of each gift that each one of us received and gave....but just for MIKE...here are photos of our gifts to the children.

BreAnne, Krista and Josiah received ipods. These were a huge blessing. I thought we could maybe swing an ipod nano 4gig but then ended up finding an ipod 30 gig at the BX for cheaper than the ipod nano around town. The ironic part of this deal is that Josiah had one on his list, shopped around and saw it was over budget and crossed it off. THEN I said, "Wouldn't this be a great gift for the girls?" He knew I bought them for the girls. I told him that it was their birthday/Christmas for the year. I could tell that he was bummed he'd crossed it off his list. Christmas a.m. we had a blast watching the totally unsuspecting girls. I thought maybe Josiah had figured it out...but he hadn't. They were all wrapped in different size boxes. He found his in the bottom of a big box and said, "I NEVER saw this coming." The older 3 have been trying to figure out how to copy their CD's to the ipod. I'm no help whatsoever. LOL


Jamin's gift from us was "Lord of the Rings Trivia/DVD edition". It didn't arrive until today...but yesterday he received his second big thing on his dream list.....a set of videos from the History Channel. He loves to watch the History channel every time we move and are stuck in TLF or motels....this will be a treat for him. He had quite a list of videos he'd like from them.

Jared's gift from us was Civilization 1709 or some such year.
Arielle has asked for a "dancing Barbie" since she was 3. This is the first year I SAW one - I thought she'd imagined it. I knew she had to get it this year or be a bit old for it next year.



Nolan's gift from us was two sets of Duplos. I know this seems strange for his age...but he can't handle the legos and these will be great for improving his motor skills and eye hand coordination.




Zander's gift from us was Lego STAR WARS play station game. What a hit this one was. He's wanted to play the Star Wars game that the older boys have but we've felt it was to old for him. This is the perfect solution for him. He quickly earned 60 tickets to earn some play time today. ::snort::




Stacia's gift from us was Noah's Ark FP blocks and an extra set of Fisher Price blocks. She loves these blocks. This was another one of those toys that I didn't know existed until Mandy gave us some on Thanksgiving.
An Organized Christmas

In one of the last meetings Master's had before the girls left, they were asked to share a Christmas memory. Bre tells that she shared how "organized" Christmas mornings are and how much she loves it. She told me this AFTER our gift exchange. ::snort:: I was shocked to hear that some are NOT organized...that children just tear into a pile of gifts! But, she says it's so...that our home with 9 children was the only one that was "organized". I think this must be because things would get lost, there are so many of us that no one would enjoy others receiving their gifts if we simply "let it rip", and Mike and I like to catch photos at strategic points...anyway we have an organized Christmas exchange.

We always wake early (but not this year), have breakfast and then read Scripture. We always wear our Christmas Eve Pj's (except last year when we skipped the pj's in favor of a gps unit).

After reading, we divide all the gifts into piles....each person has a laundry basket and a garbage sack. One for wrappings and one for presents, which can then be easily carried to their room after the storm of paper settles. This year we had to move the gifts from the tree in my room to the living room.... Everyone enjoyed helping with this...though the chaos nearly undid ME. ::snort::
When everyone had a nice pile, we began. I explained that since I was the only photographer this year, and we wanted photos of the gifts from Mike and I, that they all needed to find their packages from us first. Then we opened...and my camera (whose battery bar was FINE on the 24th) died. Bre and Krista took turns with their cameras. I'll have to figure out how to get their photos to the computer to post more photos. We proceed one by one through the list of gift givers.
A funny story from this year centers around the MAIN gift from Josiah, Jamin and Jared for Arielle, Nolan and Zander. They bought and set up a trampoline. As the younger ones came to find the gifts from the boys, they couldn't. They were concerned. We kept saying, "we'll keep going - it will show up." Then we said, "Well, lets clear away these gifts and we'll probably find it." We cleared. We got all the boxes broken down, we got all the garbage bags tied up, and still no gifts from the big boys. We were really waiting for the girls to delete photos so we had room to catch the moment on "film". Finally, I told them, "Well, I guess your gift isn't here....why don't you take some of this garbage out while I keep looking?" They did. Arielle stopped COLD. "Nolan, come here." Nolan stopped cold. Zander barrelled through the door, pushing them out of the way, and yelled "Woooaaa...what's THAT?" ::snort:: They were totally shocked. More stories with more photos - later. LOL
We spent the afternoon playing Dominoes (gift from Krista) and Apples To Apples (from Bre) We discovered that Krista HATES Apples to Apples. Strange.... The older 3 tried to get thier ipods working...I cooked Chicken Divan (requested by Cy) and played games...and frosted the Cheescake (requested by Krista) and made a cheeseball (requested by Bre)....

Zander realized that Bre is totally freaked out by his new toy tarantula...she kept flinging it across the room. It is a radio control spider.

Stacia's Daddy Bear

The whole Christmas Gift thing was overwhelming to Stacia. Since she is not our first child, ::snort:: I was prepared for this and had not gotten her a lot of things to open. I knew the children would get her things and I knew that she would want to PLAY with each one and not move on. This was her second gift of the day (the Middle Eastern Doll being first). It took her a bit of time to get going.....

This is the bear I purchased, mailed a sound box to Michael, he recorded a message and sent it back. He says, "Hi, Staica, I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long I'm living my baby you'll be. I love you Stacia." This surprises her....pleases her....and has earned the bear the name of "Daddy Bear".

She loves to listen to it...though it's hard for her to get it started....
She ran around the room sharing the bear with everyone (and showing it off a bit too I suspect)

She stopped now and then for a kiss
Mike's Package

The day began with breakfast, Scripture reading and finishing up Tabitha. Then it was on to gift giving.

We began with Mike's package. Mike had sent t-shirts for several of the children, hats for the boys (can't show most because they show his location), dolls for the girls, a gorgeous brass vase and wind chimes for me, the rest of the Narnia books he'd read for the children on tape, and a few other things.


Zander's baseball hat


Arielle & the Middle Eastern doll to add to her collection....


The girls especially liked the nose rings

My windchimes...I'll have to get a better photo - they are really cool. When I opened the package I was sure it was something broken from the rattling. The brass chimes were a pleasant surprise.


Reading a card Mike included in the package...