This Week in Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to....Allison- Wednesday, November 14th.
Allison and I have known each other since 1985. (We must have met each other when we were just tiny babies, right Al?) So, I'll spare everybody all the bad eighties hair pictures we have together and post this one when Allison was my maid of honor at our wedding (in 2001), and caught the bouquet. It must have worked because Allison became a Mrs. in 2003. I'll NEVER forget Allison's wedding....I had JR 5 days later, so you can imagine how large I was....my mom's biggest concern was that I might go into labor at the wedding and she (my mom) was going to miss the cake! Happy Birthday, Allison!

Let's Decorate!

We've been getting our Christmas decorations out around here. In fact, we spent most of the day trying to get the outside lights up. Jason and JR spent most of the day outside working on the outside lights, although JR spent most of his working time riding his big wheel up and down the driveway. I've been slowly getting some things done inside, and I have finally given up on rearranging our Nativity scenes. JR loves to play with them; so I'm just going to let him arrange them however he wants. This one from China is his favorite. I had to take a picture because he is so funny with it.
For some reason JR thinks that everybody needs to be in the bed with Baby Jesus. He has to use the stable to balance everybody in the bed, which is why it also looks like the Nativity characters are on the roof. In this picture Baby Jesus is actually near the top (just a camel and a sheep are on top of him). I asked JR why everybody needed to be in bed with Baby Jesus and told me, "Because they're sleepy." Well, Can't argue with that!

And here's Jason doing his main Christmas decoration duties. The lights. I've got him doing outside lights and inside lights. Thanks, Jason!

Nutcracker Market

I made my first trip to the Nutcracker Market today, and judging by the amount of women that were there, I'm guessing I'm one of the few that hadn't ever been before. Allison invited me to go with her, which was awesome because Allison always has VIP tickets to everything, and this was no exception. I felt pretty cool when we flashed our special white tickets and got to prance right past the crowd waiting outside. Women were literally lined up waiting for the doors to open! Since we had the special tickets, we got to shop before it opened to the public. There were SO many beautiful Christmas things; and I made it a point to try all the food samples...yum! Women were definitely in a buying frenzy today. Allison and I were standing in front of a display that had 3 reindeer on it talking about how cute they were, when two women pretty much knocked Allison down to grab two of the reindeer! We figured we better act fast if she wanted one. Being that I'm not much help with lifting or stretching these days, poor Allison was trying to reach the last reindeer up on a pedestal without knocking the rest of the display down. She finally got it with a little help from some nice women who were passing by, and she literally got at least 25 compliments on it from the time she bought it until the time we left. So here she is with the must have reindeer of the season!

I didn't buy anything, but I had a blast looking and hanging out with Allison...Thanks, Al for the great tickets and fun day!!

In Recovery

I'm still trying to recover from the fiasco that was "parent's night" last night at church choir. Of course, the one kid who has only been to choir twice this whole year was the first to show up with mom, dad, and 2 brothers in tow to watch him perform....not sure what they were expecting him to perform since he hadn't been there to learn anything we were doing. This paticular kid is in JR's Sunday School class, and JR LOVES him, so that sent JR right over the edge. It's been awhile since I've seen JR act that crazy. We started out in our choir room, so the kids weren't on risers yet, they were just standing next to/on top of each other. For the first song, I passed out these little lights for them to have while they were singing and dancing to the first song. So can you guess what they did...Let's see...some cried, some stood there, some moved around a little bit (then came and told me they were tired during the middle of the song), but pretty much none of them did what they were supposed to be doing. JR, the boy that never comes, and another little boy took their lights and used them to hit and slap each other the whole time. Of course they had somehow positioned themselves next to the little girl who never talks and cries every week. So with all the hitting, slapping, and acting crazy they were doing, she got knocked down, or hit her in the face, or something else to put her into hysterics. They next 20 minutes was pretty much more of the same, just different songs that they acted like they had never heard before and had no idea what to do. After that was over, we walked them down to get on the risers so they could perform Away in the Manger and Jingle Bells.

Here they are doing Away in the Manger.




Now, check out JR's face during Jingle Bells. He is furious at me for not letting him stand by his friend and putting him between 2 girls.



Is it possible to get fired as a church choir teacher? And if not, can they at least find me a helper?!

Back to Work Again!

Today was my day to work in JR's classroom. Quite a week for me since I had 2 days in a row of JR's class. They were all excited to see me, and it seemed each one individually had to scream out, "JR, Your mom's here!" All the kids were still on a high from the zoo, and every so often they would holler things out like, "We didn't see the rhinos!" "We saw a lion yesterday." Even though the teacher was trying to teach them about the letter "G" and in no way was talking about the zoo trip. After sitting through the "G" lesson, where I had Miracle climb in my lap, and needed me to tie her shoe, it was time for their centers. I helped out in the "sequencing center" and then when we had finished our work I read to them. It was another exciting day at school, as the firetruck came to visit them. JR was more interested in their Dalmatian, Shadow, than the truck. It was a very sweet dog. They all got to walk through the firetruck and pet Shadow if they wanted to. I think JR actually gave the dog a hug! After the firetruck show my time was up, so I headed for home. I'm now getting ready to go to church choir as all the parents are coming tonight and I am supposed to show them what I have been teaching their kids. I'm sure you can guess how excited I am about that!

It's a Zoo!

I just got home from chaperoning JR's field trip to the zoo. It actually wasn't that bad, we weren't really there that long. As a former teacher I knew they wouldn't give me the "bad" ones to keep up with. I knew those would be grouped with the teachers. My group of 5 were all nice and easy. Here they are: Hassan, Kinzah, Cadance, JR, and Rafael. That's Angela on the end, she wasn't in my group, but needed to have her picture made. Cadance was scared of all the animals and didn't want to run up and look at any of them, so she was really easy, she didn't get 2 steps away from me! We only had one run off and get lost today. If you are a regular reader of my blog, I'm sure you can guess who it was....Yep, Miracle. They found her after about 5 minutes of looking for her, she was mixed in with another class, but it gave the teacher a scare for a minute (especially since Miracle was in her group!)


Here we are at the petting zoo. That's Miracle on the end (sans balloon hair), Rafael, JR, and Mateo (the one they call Tomato) in front.


Here's the whole class. Is this diversity or what?!



I took this picture specifically to prove my point about Hassan. As you will recall from a previous blog, I talked about the huge child that couldn't possibly be 4 years old. Now look at that child! You know how big JR is for 4 and this kid is a whole head taller than JR. I'm thinking he's more like 6 or 7....I don't even think 5 year olds are that big!

And finally here are some of the guys sitting down for lunch. You'll see JR's friend Timothy is sitting next to him, and you can see Kevin in the front....Remember, JR thinks he looks like Timothy and Kevin!

Renaissance Festival

We've been meaning to make it out to the Renaissance Festival since opening weekend, and we finally made it out there today. Jason LOVES the Renaissance Festival simply for the food. I couldn't believe he didn't have a giant turkey leg today, but not to worry he did have: 2 sausage on a stick, a chicken on a stick, an empanada, some beef jerky, and an ice cream sandwich.

JR wasn't sure about all the food his daddy was eating, but he loved the sausage on a stick and ate most of Granny Sherry's kettle corn.

Both Jason and JR really enjoyed all the games! Here they are shooting arrows at dragons.

Check out JR's face in the first picture! He's not quite sure what to think about the knight on the horse ride, but he did hit the flag with his sword.

Here they are catapulting frogs.

Of course his favorite game of the day was shooting paintballs at a knight. I should have known his favorite would including shooting!

My favorite was watching them try to be "King of the Log". The videos of them are too funny!

It was a beautiful day and we all had a great time!