Christmas Eve at our house

This is the coolest book about the Titanic! Julian has barely stopped reading it since he got it (from Grandma and Grandpa).

Courtney and Billy gave Julian an erector set. Here Billy and Julian are working on assembling the battery compartment.


And these are after the kids got their new PJs, a Christmas Eve tradition for us.

Christmas at Randy and Emily's

I took about 20 pictures of Vivian in her seat, but these are by far the best 2....What a cutie!

Riding the train

On the way to Randy and Emily's house to celebrate Christmas, we stopped and rode the new Lynx blue line, which opened about a month ago, I guess. We rode from the I-485 station all the way uptown and then back to our car at I-485. The ride took about an hour both ways. The kids loved it! It was a really good surprise for them and well worth the $5.20 we had to pay to ride!

Waiting for the train to come...

The trains are so shiny and everything inside is very clean and obviously new. I'm glad we did this now before the new-ness wears off.


We were pleased with the adventure. On the ride into uptown a conversation came up between passengers about no one checking our tickets - how bad it was going to be when people realized no one was checking tickets. We even debated whether we should bother buying another ticket for the return trip. I'm glad we decided we should because a gentleman did ask to see our tickets on the return trip.

Lucy

It seems like I have been posting a lot about Lucy lately...

While we eat dinner, I make her stay out of the kitchen, because she just sits and stares at me - usually no one else - just me. So, she has to be out. Well, this has started happening now:

Carefully avoiding eye contact...

And just a moment later, this is the view from my seat - just staring.

And finally getting comfortable and sleeping when she realized I wasn't going to invite her in (which I never ever do!!!!).

Christmas Princess

Kathryn got this dress from a friend that has a little girl a year or so older...

Jesus and Santa

I just saw this on Andy's blog - it includes at least a couple of the reasons we don't do Santa at our house....and who is that narrating? He sounds so familiar....

I did it....

Well, I finally did it. I went this morning and turned in my application for spring semester at our local community college. Unfortunately, I went late enough that I missed early registration and will have to go back after their Christmas break to speak to my advisor (weird - I have an advisor!).

I was relieved to find that my college credits will transfer (what little I have). I was concerned because it has been let's see - 12 years since my last class and I did not pass a few of my classes while in college....the admissions counselor I spoke with said I actually did better than I thought I had after looking at my transcript. I do have several classes that I will get credit for, and I won't have to take remedial math! It's nice to know that those 3 semesters at State were not completely wasted, as I thought they were...

Now after registration and financial aid applications, the hard part comes - I will start part time, taking my first math class to see how this is all going to work. I plan to take it first so I can really devote as much time as I will need to it - before I have classes to juggle around...math is really not a strength of mine!

It's exciting but a little scary to start over at 30 - not what I expected when I was 18 and going to college for the first time. This is going to take some adjustment of schedules for our family, but I think we can do it.

Dad's 60th

My Dad turned 60 this weekend, and my step-mom gave him a wonderful birthday party. It was really special because 3 of his sisters were able to come - one from Kentucky and 2 from Pennsylvania.


On Friday night, Dad was completely surprised with the arrival of his sisters at the restaurant...this was taken by Sherri. I'm so glad she got it on film...

We were there for the events Saturday











THE CAKE

Hilarious - this cake was low fat, low carb, high fiber and sweetened only with fruit juices. Emily got the cake and long sparkler candles for it. At candle number 58 or so, the wax paper under the cake caught fire from one of the leaning candles.

Here, Emily is pouring Coke on the wax paper trying to quench the flames! Sorry her face is blurry, she was moving pretty quickly to keep from catching the table on fire!

Thankfully, the fire didn't get far and Dad blew and blew and finally got the candles blown out. There were A LOT of candles!

MIA AND THE KIDS

Aunt Peggy brought her beautiful Samoya (is that right, maybe it's Semoyan?? I don't really know...), Mia, with her to visit. She is like a HUGE teddy bear and my kids could not get enough of her. They laid with her and followed her the whole day and into the night.

THE KIDS AND PAPPY

Pappy helped Julian finish a castle he and Evan had started earlier in the day.

Poor Dad, he wanted to visit with his family, but Julian and Kathryn are used to being the center of attention when they are with Pappy, and they wouldn't leave him alone. That's the hard part of being such a good Pappy, I guess.

And as always, this is how it ended:

Julian actually made it the whole way home awake - and we didn't get home until about 11 pm, so pretty impressive. Kathryn only made it about 35 minutes. It was a really good day.

"O Tanenbaum"

Our tree has been up for about a week now, and I have been trying to get a good picture of it, but it is just not easy to do. I love icicles. I have been informed this is definitely a Yankee thing, but to my credit, you can still see the branches, ornaments and lights under the icicles. Believe me, there are icicles and then there are icicles! Well, the icicles are not conducive to picture taking, apparently.

Anyway, I guess this is a fairly decent picture of the tree and some of my favorite ornaments.

It's hard to believe, this is our 10th Christmas together - our first was in 1998!These are ornaments my Mom made a long time ago...

And of course the personalized ones for the kids...

Cute Lucy pics

I moved the furniture around when I put the tree up last week, and Lucy's favorite nap spot (behind the couch) is no longer accessible to her. So, she has really been digging the recliner...the first picture is how she used to lay behind the couch - on her back legs in the air. She is a strange dog - strange but very cute sometimes...

Tracing - with your child's name

For those of us with preschool kids, this is really neat - you can put in any word you want for your child to practice writing...

http://www.mymoondrops.com/info/spelling.html#

CSN

I just wanted to share this with those of you that don't already know about it. CSN International is a radio station that broadcasts sermons all day. They do have music between the sermons, but it is music from different church choirs - praise music mostly. I have really enjoyed it and listen to it as often as I can. So far, there is only one preacher I am not crazy about - they all seem to stick to ideas backed up biblically (except for this one guy - kinda weird, that one!) I really like "To Every Man an Answer", which comes on at 6:00. They do a webcast too, so you can listen to it at work. :) If you go to the "CSN Stations" tab, you can find a station near you...I hope you enjoy!

CSN International

Kathryn "reading"

Kathryn is really showing an interest in books and reading lately. She never really has before, so this is really good.