Happy Birthday Honey!

Yesterday was my sweetheart's birthday. He spent part of the day at work since he'd taken off the day before to go to a Football Bowl game in B'ham. They offered free tickets for Military and their Family members, So he took Rebekah and Amanda and Hannah with him. They had a fun day.

For his birthday, we made him a cake, and then He and I went out to dinner. We thought about going out to a movie, but we didn't manage to make the right time frame, so we went shopping and then came home.

Not a terribly exciting birthday for him, but... I hope it was a good birthday over all.

I love you, and am so happy to be married to you!

Christmas Pictures...

Here we are ready for our Bethlehem dinner.

Rebekah saw this funny nightshirt in a catalog, so that is what I bought for her for Jammies. (Glad I bought flannel christmas jammies shorts to go under her nightshirt.)

The Thomas the Train was a BIG hit!!! Liam spent hours and hours playing with it! Sometimes he got up close and personal with the trains! ;-) He only wanted to play trains, he didn't even want to unwrap any of his other presents! Everyone else was finished unwrapping gifts and he hadn't unwrapped anything yet!

At one point he said to the train as it was going around... 'slow down Thomas, I want to Hug you! Then he picked it up and hugged it and said, "I Love you Thomas"! It was so cute!!!

Liam also had lots of help building different track configurations throughout the day...

Amanda was the subject of Sariah's first photo shoot.

Sariah saw these really beautiful instrument ornaments and got them for her sisters. I think they loved them, look at their faces!

Rebekah of course LOVED her computer!

Rebekah along with making a scrapbook for Amanda made her a CD of 'sister' music - fun stuff they like to sing together, and harmonize on, and other stuff that is a little more meaningful. Then she decided to make a CD for Dad, and one for me as well. When dad's was playing a couple touching daddy daughter songs, they hit us nd dad grabbed Rebekah in a big hug, and cried. The recent song by Billy Ray Cirrus and Miley 'Baby get ready, get set, don't go!' gets us about every time we listen to it. I cried several times as we listened to each of our 3 cd's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3LS-VT3K8A&feature=related

Amanda Amazingly LOVED her books! (who would have EVER thought I'd say that!?!?!)

And of course she was thrilled with her new phone!

And here we have our fashionista rocker babes!

And we can credit Grandma and Grandpa for the GAME extravaganza! The kids have had lots of fun (and us too) playing games. We have wireless games (as our friend R jokingly told us), can you imagine??? games that aren't battery opperated, or electronic??? Just regular old games.

Everyone seems to love this game Rush Hour. It is only a one person logic game, but it had a lot of use throught the day.

Elefun was one of the few games that would draw Liam's attention away from Thomas!

O.K. so we did get some video and wii games. The DS games they can play with each other on their different DS's so they are actually still interacting.

Bethlehem Dinner

Christmas Eve...

We started the day out with a trip to the movies. Hannah has been begging us to take her to see Desperaux. It was a really cute movie! We came home, (stopping off for a few last minute items) made some more cookies, wrapped some more gifts and then started to prepare our Special Christmas Eve Dinner.

We got the idea years ago, and it has become our family tradition...

The Bethlehem Dinner is fairly simple. We light candles and turn out the lights. We eat simple foods, trying to eat things that perhaps they might have eaten back then. We eat fish (we just fry a simple salmon filet), grapes, cheese, simple crackers and bread, and as we ate, we talked about what this dinner represented - Joseph and Mary, journeying to Bethlehem...
After we eat our meal, we all sit back and listen to the Story of the Nativity from St. Luke in the Bible. Normally Bill reads. This year I don't really know if it was a way to involve Rebekah more, since it could be our last Christmas together with her for a while (or at least with just our family)... or perhaps it was because Liam was being a pill, he had not napped all day and so Bill held him and tried to have him re-enact the Nativity story with one of our little Nativity sets. It was nice.

After dinner we let the kids open pj's (they all have fun, seeing what kind of jammies they each get), then everyone changes and puts on their new pj's. This ear when they all started asking to open just one more gift... we decided that we'd let them open the present they got from playing secret santa - when they drew each other's names. It was sort of funny this year - Liam had Marissa, Marissa had Hannah, Hannah had Sariah, and Sariah had Liam... then the two older girls managed to draw each other's names. It was cute to see what they came up with. They both did a little scrap book for each other - Amanda did a best friend theme, and Rebekah did a sister theme. Both of them were partly to say I love you, and also so that they won't forget each other next year.

We sent kids upstairs to get setteled down, and let them take the small tv/dvd player up to the little girls room where the 4 younger kids all attempted to fall asleep, while watching a movie. Liam eventually fell asleep, then later Hannah and Marissa fell asleep. I think we were upstiars in bed by 11:30 pm or possibly a bit before. That's earlier than normal even! ;-)

I didn't fall asleep until after midnight, and Liam came in around 2:30 am. In between Hannah would get up and go to the bathroom... or go look at the clock in Sariah's room. They had been discussing what time we could do presents (how early in the morning they were allowed to wake us up!), we'd told them bsolutely not before 6 am! I had tried to get away with 8 or 9 am, but I was out voted!
At about 4 am, I heard Hannah go and report back to Sariah (they were both awake from about midnight on), that they only had about two more hours left to wait... I think I was awake just about every hour all night long. Bill woke up a little before 5 am. I woke up hearing the kids across the hall, then heard Rebekah get in the shower, so Bill figured that really the only one asleep in the whole house was Liam and he wasn't going to be happy no matter what time we woke him up... (and perhaps Amanda), so... we were all awake and downstairs for presents, just before 5 am! (ugh!!! I am NOT a morning person!) ;-)
Before 7 am, I had baked monkey bread (that I'd prepared the night before) and cooked Bacon (in my new pan's that Bill surprised me with - since when I cooked bacon last week for quiche, it burned and stuck to the bottom of our frying pan, my 10-11 yr old pans, were done for!). That's a red letter day! First of all, that I'm up and moving, let alone ready to eat, and certainly not cooking before 7 am! I usually prefer to eat breakfast around 10 am - I'm real good for Brunch! ;-) I would rather not eat early, and I don't usually (hardly ever, if I don't absolutely have to), make breakfast!!!!! Bill is the breakfast person at our house. Now that the kids are older, sometimes they will either offer to cook breakfast, or we can beg them to cook breakfast, but you can ask my kids, I don't cook breakfast!!!

Anyway, we all took a break from playing and reading, (except Liam, who is having a love afair with his Thomas the Tank Engine train table and train stuff (Bill/ I mean Santa, got a really great deal from someone on Craigs List). It has been the hit of the day!!! He played for hours and hours on it!), to eat some breakfast and then everyone was back to playing by 7:30 a.m. or so. Hannah and Marissa were even dressed and outside riding scooters that early! Yikes! I thought it was cold!!!
Rebekah was absolutely thrilled that she got a laptop computer... We weren't so much since that is just one step closer to her going off to college... :-( Amanda is thrilled with her new phone! Of course the fact that her old one litterally broke in half about a week or two ago almost messud up her Christmas! Bill was able to find a phonne someone was giving away on free cycle, and it was the same brand as one of our old one's so we were hoping the old charger woud work on it. It has managed to hold her off, and not let her know for sure about wether or not she was getting a new phone or not from Santa... Sariah was not so happy that she didn't get the cell phone she was hoping against hope for... but she got a fun new camera to be able to take all the pictures she ever wants.
This afternoon we went to the movie again and saw Bedtime Stories (aside from a small amount of bathroom humor), it was a very fun movie!!!

We had a very good day over all, and especially the fact that we are all very tired!!! I can't believe anyone is still awake! I want to go to bed! (and Christmas eve.after I get the phone call back from one of my mom's - I hope quite honestly that she's not in labor, since I am not in top form, and wont' be as good a help to her as I normally would be), I will be off and can hope for a full nights sleep!

A Good Day...

I did it! We did it!! And it went well!!! And it was fun!!!!

Marissa wasn't feeling very well last night and today, so she stayed home from Church. I stayed with her, and while I was home, I made icing for Gingerbread houses, and got out all the cookies and candies and stuff for toppings and put it all out in the separated trays. When the rest of the family got home, Dinner was started, and after we ate we began the craziness! ;-)

Lots of Icing was used (I had to scrape it/the cement, off the table afterward). Lots of candy and cookies were eaten, and everyone got to make a cute little Gingerbread (Graham Cracker) house of their own, and I cheated and bought the kit with the pre-made pieces for the big family one.

It is fun to see all of the individual creativity that they had on their houses.
Rebekah made a Christmas in Malibu house with 'sand' (cookie crumbs) and a 'palm tree'. She even added a Nativity to the outside of it.

Amanda did more of a little log cabin, with a smoke stack on top and she broke up life savers to make a stained glass window.

Sariah has a bit of a winter wonder land, and did an adorable tree, a person making snow angels, and she has a dog and yellow snow! (eeeewwwww!!!). She painted her house walls blue. And she also did a very small tiny nativity.

Hannah made more of a club house, and has a big cookie headed person climbing a ladder to get into her house.

Marissa's house has lots of color and she used lots of fun candies and icing on hers. She made a little doggy door with a doggy tail sticking out of it.

Liam had a LOT of help from Mommy (hey, I couldnt just let the control freak in me go completely!). He took a big bite out of the first graham cracker piece he picked up, so I had to get a new one to build his house with. He wanted m&m's for his, but after handing him a bunch, and putting a glob of icing on the roof of his house, and showing him how to put the m&m on it, he cried and said NO! he just wanted to eat his m&m's! he finally helped toward the end. When he was done, he ran upstairs and got some books and had daddy sit down and read to him.

The 'Family' house is a little plain and boring over all, since everyone spent most of their time working on their own houses... Amanda put it together, and dad did a little decorating. Hannah decorated one of the gingerbread snowman cookies. I did the tree and the other snowman cookie. Liam really wanted to eat the Cookie Man! I told him we would make cookie men tomorrow. That did appease him.

4 more days till Christmas...