Misc. Christmas Pics

We had a busy couple of weeks leading up to Christmas.  Here are a few things we were up to.

She was not thrilled at all!

Justin was baby Jesus in a live nativity for their church.  

Is that not the cutest baby Jesus (besides the real thing) ever!

I loved how my tree turned out this year.  So colorful and sparkly!

My mom, step sister Julie, cousin Jennifer and I went to a Michael W. Smith & Amy Grant Christmas concert.  What a treat.  Such a great night and I hope it's a concert that I'd be able to see again some other year.  (Michael is up in the front and Amy is sitting on a stool right behind him.).  In the back is the live orchestra which made the concert so awesome.  

Christmas Card Pics

I saw an idea on Pinterest to find a pretty wrapping paper and to tape it to the wall and on to the floor for a backdrop for Christmas pictures.  Ashley already had a sparkly red Christmas dress that I bought for her earlier in the fall so when I saw this snowflake wrapping paper, I bought it to give this a try.  It worked pretty good except that it was alittle too shiny in some of the pictures and glared.  My kids gave me a run for my money though...around 70 pictures to get 1 decent one!

This was the one that worked for the card.  

Here are a few that didn't.

Ashley Update

Ashley will be 14...I mean 4... in just a couple weeks.  Here are a couple things she's been up to:

• She really enjoys preschool.  She is pretty independent so I think she has alittle bit of a hard time being told what to do sometimes while there.  But it's so good for her to be around the other kids and get some interaction with others without me there. 
• Ashley has been picking up the reading from Bennett's homework and is learning how to read a few words.  But besides the reading, she's actually learning to spell words pretty easily too.  One night while I was making home-made pizza she learned how to spell pizza.  Well, a few weeks later I told Mike to "either go get M-c-D (McDonalds) or p-i-z-z-a" and Ashley said "I want pizza!"  She knows how to spell Mom, Dad, Bennett, Ashley, cat, pizza, cake, the...probably 12 words.  She probably can read about 20 words. 
• She enjoys drawing pictures, playing with Little People, following me around the house (all day), talking (all day), whining (all day), playing dress-up...girl things.   
  
   She had a fall trip to a pumpkin patch with her preschool class.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   Her teacher occasionally will post pictures on a facebook page from the preschool day.  On this particular day she got to be the Special Helper.
  

On Sunday I helped her get dressed for church and after she was dressed she said "I don't love this.  It's tooooo borrrring".  She had alittle hissy fit about it but we didn't have time to change.  And I probably wouldn't have let her change anyways cause I thought she looked cute!

Halloween

This year for Halloween we went to the Halloween Party in our town again.  It's getting easier going to this party since the kids are older now and can play the games by themselves and understand what to do and to say thank you after they play and get the candy.  Again this year, cousin Amy was in town with Evan and Grace so the four kids had fun seeing each other this night and playing together at Shirley's during the weekend.  

The actual night of Halloween was a night when Mike worked and Kristen had a volleyball game and it was very cold.  So instead of me taking them out trick or treating around town, we dressed up in our costumes and went to the volleyball game instead.  Luckily they didn't seem to mind.  But because of that and being really rushed to get to the game on time, I didn't get any pictures of just the kids in their costumes with the pumpkins.  Oh well, next year.

Kristen's Volleyball Season

The month of October has been very busy heading to Kristen's volleyball games.  She's a sophomore this year and is starting again on the volleyball team at Bethany.  She's having a pretty good season personally and the team is doing so-so.  They haven't won that many games but have been able to keep the games close for the most part. 

Ashley has enjoyed going to many of the home games with my mom and myself.  Bennett says they are too boring. 

 

 

 

 

Awesome photo that the photographer at Bethany took.

 

https://fbcdn-video-e-a.akamaihd.net/hvideo-ak-xaf1/v/t42.1790-2/1662795_10152335728177105_851717821_n.mp4?oh=c0bb263b8e2144581612d5e580dabaac&oe=54473085&__gda__=1413948935_564326cc2ea3bbc0e728aa100272909d

(a really great video clip I was able to take of her)

Kids Say...

Ashley was looking at a picture of Justin's activity play mat on Facebook.  It had hanging toys like a bee, a frog etc.  Then she pointed at one and said "Is that a tuna can?"  Me, "a tuna can???"  Then Mike got it, she meant a toucan bird!  

It was Bennett's last real day of summer vacation and we needed to go to Target and then as a treat I had decided to take them to McDonalds to play in the Playplace and then to get some ice cream.  In the McDonalds parking lot when I told them what we were doing there, Bennett's face lit up and he looked so happy.  I said to him "Am I the best mom ever?"  He replied with "Yeah!  But I still like Grandma better".  Gee thanks kid.

About a week after Kristen had left for college, she had called to talk to my mom while we were over at her house one night.  I said to Bennett "Do you know who Grandma is talking to? I'll give you a hint.  It is a person that used to live here that doesn't anymore."  He stood there thinking for a second and then started to walk over to a family picture hanging in moms living room and pointed up and said "That guy!"...meaning my dad.  Jon and I burst out laughing.  Though this is true, it was not the obvious answer.

At my mom's farm a mama cat had 6 baby kittens in August.  One day when we went out to check on them a few of them had their eyes open.  Bennett was excited and got down real close to the box and said "Hi kitty.  I'm Bennett Ford".

Family outing to Fleet Farm.  Ashley and I went into the bathroom.  She went first and then I decided to go quick.  While I was sitting there going to the bathroom, Ashley apparently had a burst of love for me and decided that was the perfect time to give me a huge hug and tell me she loved me.

After watching Wheel of Fortune and seeing someone win alot of money, Bennett said "Mom, we should go on this show so we have money to buy me the flashing shoes".  For school he wanted the light up shoes (which I'm just not a fan of) so as an excuse while at Target I told him they were too much money....which they were a few dollars more so I wasn't totally lying to him.

Ashley "What is a touchdown?"  Bennett "A touchdown is what it's called when they get a touchdown"

Overheard Ashley singing "I'm on the toilet, I'm on the toilet, I'm on the toilet. I need to go pee."

While driving to Kristen's volleyball games I asked Bennett if he remembered what number Kristen was.  He knew and right away said "4".  Then he said something like "she's still on level 4 and hasn't gotten to 5 yet."

David's Shed Update

 If you remember, last summer/fall, David took down this old shed at my mom's to put up a new poll shed as his shop.  Here are the links if you need a refresher and some before pics.

http://4dfam.blogspot.com/2013/07/corn-crib-shed.html

http://4dfam.blogspot.com/2013/08/shed-update.html

Here is a quick update of where he is with his shed this summer:

Unfortunately because of our late spring and then very very wet June, he didn't get stared on this as soon as he would have hoped.  The first step was to bring in fill and get everything leveled out.  Because it was too wet, this didn't happen until the end of July.  And then of course a few days later we left on vacation so he didn't technically start building anything until the first week in August.  He has been doing the whole thing by himself with Josh's help, and alittle bit from his friend or Jon or Kristen.  Here are a bunch of pictures showing the progress from August until now.  (I missed the day when Hennings were over bringing in the fill and leveling it off...Bennett's favorite day to date - he got a dump truck ride, backhoe ride and bobcat ride from them!).
As you know, click on the pictures to make them bigger.





 



 

 

 

 

 

The first few weeks of actual building went alittle bit slow and tedious because everything needed to be so precise.  But once he started with the roof tin and siding, he's been moving right along and it looks awesome.  He hopes to have the remaining siding on the front done this weekend.  Then the next steps are to insulate the inside, put tin on the inside and bring in a cement truck to cement the floor.  The goal is to obviously have this all done yet this fall so that during the winter he can finish off some of the details inside and move his tools in.  He's saving himself about $7000 by building the shed himself and he's doing a great job at it and it looks amazing!