Happy Valentine's Day

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day! I saw this cute idea on a favorite blog of mine (http://www.designmom.com/) and I think they turned out so cute. It took about 5 minutes to upload the photos to Walgreens.com, add the border and message, and order them. I picked them up later that night. Assembly and adding messages on the back with the boys took about 15 minutes. Easy! That's my kind of project.
One of the reasons I love my boys small, Christian, school? Small class sizes!! In years past it was like I was running a sweat shop trying to get the boys to put together and add names to all their valentines. 60 valentines versus 20 valentines? I'll take it!





Our Valentines plans were foiled a bit but it was still a great day. Tyler and I had plans to go to my brother-in-law's fabulous restaurant in KC, but instead I ended up supporting a mom in labor. In my line of work when a baby decides to come everything else goes out the window. It's easy to keep things in perspective though when your job involves watching the miracle of birth.

Happy Father's Day...

...to my daddy. I have so much in my life to be thankful for. You're definitely at the top of that list. I'm beyond blessed to have you as my daddy.
Unfortunately it seems we don't have very many recent pictures together (we'll fix this next week). But I found several of you and your grandkids. Which is fitting because you're also an amazing PaPa.
Thanks, Daddy, for everything and once again I'm sorry for all the eye rolling.

(Papa Jim and Margo)

(Papa with grandkids)

(reading to Brennan)

(With me and a little Calvin)

(with Grandma and Margo)

I love you daddy!

An Ode to My Children's Daddy

Tyler,

It stinks that you have to be gone on Father's Day! But we're celebrating you today and we'll celebrate more when you get home. Our kids have no idea how blessed they are to have you, but I do. You are an amazing father. I'd be completely sunk without you in this parenting gig.

You make "runny" eggs for breakfast, you mow the lawn with "helpers" even though it takes twice as long, you pick the boys up from school, you know their schedules (almost) as well as I do, you read books in funny voices but best of all you point them to Christ. Again and again and again. For that I am so very thankful.

I asked all the kiddos some questions about daddy today. Here are their answers, unedited.

What is your favorite thing about your dad?
Brennan: his hair
Calvin: he's funny
Charlotte: I like his shirt
margo: dadadada

What is your favorite thing to do with your dad?
Brennan: go to the driving range
Calvin: go to the driging range
Charlotte: play games
Margo: babababa

How old is your dad?
Brennan: 34
Calvin: 24
Charlotte: 8 25 30
Margo: mamamamama

What is your favorite thing that your dad does for you?
Brennan: takes us to the gas station for special drinks
Calvin: he says 'yes' when I want to play games
Charlotte: makes cookies and plays house
margo: dadadada

What is your dads favorite food?
Brennan: fish
Calvin: pasta
Charlotte: lasagna
Margo: babababa

What does your dad like to do when he's by himself?
Brennan: read a book
Calvin: work on the computer
Charlotte: play games by himself
Margo: mamamamama

If you could say anything to dad right now, what would you say?
Brennan: hi dad
Calvin: how was your trip?
Charlotte: hi
Margo: dadadadada

If daddy was here for Father's Day what would you do for him?
Brennan: make him a card, wish him happy father's day and make him lunch
Calvin: give him 1 coin, $2, 1 nickel, 5 cents
Charlotte: make him a craft
Margo: babababab

What does your dad do for you that is special to you?
Brennan: he takes me to the church with him
Calvin: reads the bible to me
Charlotte: he makes me breakfast
Margo: mamamamama

Below is a picture of you with each of our children. They may seem random, but they're not. They are all moments that tell what a great dad you are. You'll remember the settings, I'll stop shy of telling the world about the moments.

(Daddy and Brennan)

(daddy with Calvin)

(daddy with Charlotte)

(daddy with Margo, her expression here is by no means a reflection of you)

Happy Father's Day to the best of the best!

Wacky

Things have been a little wacky around here lately. This picture pretty much sums it up.

Stay tuned for lots of updates. We had a wonderful Easter with family and celebrated 2 birthdays in a weeks time. Brennan turned 8 and Charlotte turned 4. I also have a really big announcement to make :)

Christmas 2010

I'm still in the process of digging out of that post-Christmas slump. Today is our last, lazy day at home, the boys head back to school tomorrow (!). Looking back over the past 4 weeks makes me smile. It really was a wonderful Christmas. The kids are growing up, of course physically, but also spiritually. It's neat to see them beginning to grasp the true meaning of Christmas. Of course, at 32 years old I'm still trying to do the same thing.

Here are a handful of pictures from the past 3 weeks. I don't take nearly enough pictures!

Cute Christmas kids

Every year we host a Christmas party for Tyler's volunteer army. It's about 15-20 college and post college kids and it's always a fun night.

This was hands-down the best White Elephant gift I've ever seen. A genetically modified fish that glows under a black light!

This was Christmas round 1 at Aunt Lisa's house. We celebrated the weekend before Christmas with Grandma Janet and Papa Skip and the Clements/Hibbard side of the family.

A picture of the moms who are (almost) never in front of the camera.

Charlotte and Addison having so much fun playing with Aunt Lisa's jewelry!

Sadly this is the only picture I have of Christmas round 2 at Grandpa Walt and Grandma Deb's house. Unfortunelty this is when the stomach flu began to make its way around. Here is everyone decorating cookies.

Here's the traditional end of the hallway picture of the kids before racing down to the living room. Because both Tyler and I's parents are divorced and remarried we celebrate Christmas with lots of people. We love it and it's wonderful. But, beginning Christmas Eve through Christmas noon it's just the 6 of us and I love it.

Once again this is the only picture I have of Christmas day with my side of the family. Here is Gigi (my momma) with all 10 of her grandkids. 5 boys and 5 girls.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I'm closing the book on 2010 and ready for a new year. Next up...Happy New Year!

Today

Right now my kitchen counter is covered with dozens of sugar cookies. Half still awaiting a cover of icing. My coffee is hot, the babies are sleeping and I'm sitting down with tears in my eyes to write this. I am so moved in this moment by an amazing soundtrack to my afternoon. Actually, it's not the music it's the truth it contains, the true meaning of Christmas.

I'm thinking about Mary's labor of love in that stable.

What must it have been like on the cold ground of that stable?

What does it feel like when the baby in your womb is the maker of the moon?

I'm thinking about the redemptive plan for my life (and yours too).

I'm worshiping my deliverer who came to earth as a baby, yet he was God!

I'm listening to Andrew Peterson's album Behold The Lamb Of God.

Do yourself a favor and go HERE to buy this CD or download it. If you can't afford the whole thing or don't know that you'll like it, go to iTunes, search Andrew Peterson and download just one song, Labor Of Love. And then worship the One that came as a baby to be our deliverer.

(side note: do you do a Jesse Tree? In need of a lesson on the lineage of Christ? The song Matthew's Begats will help with both.)

Merry Christmas.

Rather Random Ramblings

Here's a hodgepodge post if I've ever seen one.

* Upon leaving the house this morning for school Brennan turned around in the driveway and said "make sure and tell Margo I love her when she wakes up." I died. Right there. In the doorway. In my jammies.

* Recently I've had a horrible time waking up in the mornings. HORRIBLE TIME. Ideally, I like to get up 45 minutes before the kids start moving in the mornings. Let's just say my snooze button has been getting a lot of action lately. This morning my alarm was playing Tender Tennessee Christmas by Amy Grant (love this song). I turned the volume down so that Amy wasn't screaming at me and thought surely this will get me out of bed. And then promptly fell back asleep.

* We had a really wonderful Thanksgiving. How was yours? We had a full 4 days of celebrating and eating. We are beyond blessed and are so thankful for the many gifts in our lives.

* On Sunday we decorated our home for Christmas. When I was young decorating our house for Christmas was one of my very favorite days. Oh how I loved the transformation and the anticipation of Christmas. So it is such a joy to watch my kids love this day as well. They can barely contain their excitement. So I let them decorate the tree all by themselves and then once they're in bed, promptly go and rearrange all the ornaments {grin}.

*After we were done decorating Tyler set the timer on the camera and we took a family picture in front of the tree.

Are you kidding me? Every single eye is on the camera, everyone is smiling. It's a Christmas miracle! Too bad we're at the end of a long day, in mis-matched clothes, no makeup and dirty socks. Oh well, to be certain, this is life right now.

*So now it's your turn. Share a random thought from your day in the comment section!

Christmas Catch Up

We had a wonderful Christmas. It was full of family! I'm not going to try and write about it all, but here's a picture summary with some commentary.

First off, Calvin's preschool Christmas program. He was a wise man. And yes, that's our tall guy on the back row!


Brennan lost his 2nd front tooth just before Christmas...priceless!


First celebration was Christmas Eve morning with Grandpa Walt and Grandma Deb. We always open gifts in new jammies with them.

The kiddos waiting patiently to open gifts!

He was so excited about a wii!


We went back home that evening so that we could be at our own church for Christmas Eve service. We also like to have Christmas morning with just our little family. It's become our favorite part of all the Christmas celebrations. Just the 5 (almost 6!) of us, reading the Christmas story, opening gifts, eating a yummy breakfast. I don't have very many pictures, but here's a couple cute ones.
Does everyone do this picture? I know we did growing up! Here's the kids waiting at the end of the hallway before getting to go and look under the tree. Such suspense!

Tyler and Char taking a little break.

Here are the kids with some of their favorite gifts.



(yes, my sons got hunting games and light sabers and my daughter got a vacuum, we're nothing if not stereotypical.)

On Christmas afternoon we drove out to Grandma Janet and Papa's Skips house. There was about 8 inches of beautiful snow on the ground. But that didn't stop us! Again, I don't have many pics, but here's a few.

Here's an ariel view of everyone hanging out in the living room.

Brennan got a set of real (junior) golf clubs!

Me, trying on one of the kid's hats.

All the grandkids (we'll add 2 more in the next 8 weeks!).

We did a lot of this while being snowed in at Grandma and Papa's. Brennan got UNO and we seriously must have played at least 100 hands. It was so strange to have him sitting with all the adults playing cards. I vividly remember chasing him around that house trying to keep him from destroying things! We have entered a new phase.


It really was a wonderful Christmas. The kids (at least the boys) seemed to really understand the true meaning of Christmas this year. Of course they were excited about gifts, but their comprehension of the birth of Christ seemed evident this year. I always worry about Christmas getting buried in gifts and family (don't we all), but they seem to have a simple understanding of why we do all those things. They understand we are celebrating the birth of our Savior.

I'm leaving a lot out. The blizzard of 2009, dead car battery, a very meaningful Christmas Eve service, kids with colds, great sledding, family tension, great food, short nights in uncomfortable beds, greedy children, greedy parents, an addiction to frosted sugar cookies, the list goes on and on. But this blog is only a snapshot of life. You know that don't you? I hope when I look back on this in 20 years I remember all the things I didn't take the time to write about or didn't want to post for others to read.
Hope you had a very Merry Christmas! And now on to 2010. I'll start blogging about that soon, I promise.

The Star Wars Gang and a Pizza Hut Delivery Guy

Memories from Halloween 2009:

* Yes, if you're very observant, you noticed the boys are wearing the same costumes as last year. This was their choice, not mine. I tried to get them to at least trade. Nope.
* Since this was probably the last year Charlie would not have an opinion on her costume, we made her be Yoda.
* The boys didn't think for a moment that since she was a girl she couldn't be Yoda. I love this. In their thinking, short person=Yoda.
* Our boys still don't like anything on their faces. They wore their masks for the pictures only.
* They still don't get the "quantity" part of Halloween. After about one block they were ready to come home and eat candy. Fine by me!
* This year we were at Aunt Lisa's in Kansas City for Halloween. She has a GREAT neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Lots of older couples who gushed over our kids and gave GREAT treats!
* Tyler dressed up as a Pizza Hut delivery guy. Funny because he used to be one! When we lived in TN and Tyler played music full time, delivering pizza's paid a lot of bills. Towards the end of the night I asked him to go change clothes, it was bringing back a mixed bag of feelings {grin}.

Now that we're done with Halloween, bring on the good Holidays!!

My Pumpkins

A couple of nights ago we had a family pumpkin carving night. Beef stew for dinner, pumpkin carving and pumpkin cookies. The kids were so excited (me too)!

Five years ago, when B was just one year old, I wanted to carve pumpkins. I made a big deal of it. A fun afternoon of fall foods and pumpkin carving. Then we spent the entire time trying to get B to stop eating the pumpkin guts! He could have cared less about the carving and certainly wasn't able to help at all. Well, we've come a long way. This year he was very specific about the pumpkin he wanted (green), once I cut the lid off he cleaned out the inside all by himself (no easy task!). He drew on paper what he wanted the face to look like and I drew it on the pumpkin. Then, with only a little help from dad, he cut the face out! He loved every minute of it.

We've never talked about the scarier sides of Halloween. My kids have only really known about pumpkins, costumes and candy so far. As a side note, we've never shopped for costumes either, they've always chosen something out of their dress up clothes they already own...SCORE!! They have no idea people go to great lengths for costumes. Anyway, their exposure to the scarier side of Halloween is expanding ever so slightly. Brennan wanted a "scary" face on his pumpkin. It's interesting to watch him process this information. It's causing good conversation about the things in life we should really be afraid of, what is Truth and what is pretend and what we do and don't believe in.