Christmas Eve and Morn

Andrew decided to invite everyone into his room for a Christmas Eve sleepover. That way, the first one up could get everyone up together. Delainey was struggling with a cold, so she coughed most of the night away leaving Andrew with, and I quote, "4 hours and 6 minutes of sleep" but who's counting?

Visions of sugar plums??




The line up



Trying things out




Andrew has declared Wii music the BEST GAME EVER CREATED!!! (many thanks to Jared, Mary and company!!)

Christmas Sunday

I had ward council meeting before church on Christmas Sunday. As I was getting everything ready to leave I felt my inner Southern woman coming on in full form. I turned to Matt and said "You know, it's a great tribute to my faith that I'm actually going to this meeting this morning." He looked puzzled and I explained, "Because I'm leaving you at home to get the kids ready on Christmas Sunday!" He did a fabulous job and even got some pictures in!

In their Christmas finery (all the boys, including Matt and my dad) had matching ties and Delainey picked out her dress. (and oh, the height discrepencies...)




More true to life:

One of those streets...

We are very fortunate-we live on "one of those streets." During the Christmas season quite a few of the neighbors put up lighted arches. At last count, our street had 23. It's so much fun to drive through at night. Then, on Christmas Eve, they light luminaries, walk down the street waving and saying "Merry Christmas" to the people driving by to see the lights. Then, a special person comes and brings gifts to the kids! Lots of fun:

A look at the arches:




Our house:




Santa arrived on his "Deere"



Gifts for the kids: (notice the terrified Delainey clinging to mom!)

Work Christmas party

One thing we used to really enjoy when we lived here before was the Harris Christmas Party. They have lots of fun activities for the family-food, pony rides, crafts, rock climbing, the moon bounce activities, a hay ride, battle of the bands, car show....and gifts for the kids!! Delainey was totally stoked when she saw the ponies. We went at the busiest time so we spent too much time in line, but we still had lots of fun.

A great looking foursome:



Chase gives it a go (he needed just a little convincing)



Need I say more?

The joy of Sunday Movies!!

So, since the beginning of our child rearing life we have had a rule about Sunday movies. The usual-10 commandments type, scripture videos, and movies with "real people and songs" (musicals) A week or so ago, Braden, joined quickly by Chase and Delainey, could be heard singing "matchmaker, matchmaker..." Just tonight as he got ready for scouts, he was belting (and he really can belt, and sometimes on key!) "If I were a rich man..." I love it when my children are affected by their exposure to the classics.

Out of the mouth of babes...

So a couple of cute quotes from our house..

After a dinner time discussion about all the new/coming cousins, Chase seemed a bit bewildered by the sheer numbers of people. He then declared "All our family has been born!!" I couldn't agree more.

Braden, after trying to explain something to me "My brain is too complex for my mouth!!" I don't know if my brain is too complex for my mouth but I certainly have a disconnect point from my brain to my mouth!!

and the rockets red glare...

Friday night I stood at the beach by the Cocoa Beach Pier along with a few thousand of my closet friends and watched the night launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. There's nothing quite so spectacular as a night launch of a shuttle. The night suddenly become sunrise as the whole skyline brightens up. Ater a few seconds the stunningly bright shuttle peeks its way over the building tops and you stand, absolutely amazed and awestruck, as you ponder what you're looking at. A rocket (actually a few) attatched to a large vehicle, carrying people blasting up and into the atmosphere. At night you can see when the SRB's fall off as two small points of light separate themselves from the brighter spot of the shuttle. You then watch, for what seems like a really long time, as the shuttle curves around the earth on it's way out to space. After a time, the ever dwindling spot of light that is the shuttle goes out, and there is a sigh of relief that everything went according to plan. Launch successful.

It's AMAZING!!! It's like Disney except Science and not Fantasy. I'm not the most eloquent writer so the words aren't coming, but it's amazing to look around and see how many people will drive long distances to see a shuttle launch. It's one of those, only happens here experiences that follow us wherever we go. Every place we've lived has the "only happens here" experiences and I love them.

I don't know what Washington will decide about the space program, but before they make any solid decisions, they all need to come and watch a night launch and experience the magic of Kennedy Space Center.

Halloween-late post

I know there are many of you who do not particularly care for late posts, but life is life and cameras are cameras, and getting pictures from the father in law who had the only pictures of Halloween takes a while! (Thanks Matt for staying up to all hours of the night getting these!)

Frankenstein and his bride, 14 years later...



Delainey, our little carrot



Braden as a yeti-and boy, the few numbers of people who got that one are even fewer than the people who knew what a yeti was...





Chase as a spider, or for all you Harry Potter fans, an acromantula:



Sadly, it appears that we didn't get pictures of Andrew as a stick figure. I will say that it was light when we took pictures so he wouldn't have shown up well anyway..

I've been tagged...

My friend Charity tagged me with the "I" tag so here goes.

I AM tall, happy to be here, not very creative at the moment, and an Odyssey of the Mind coach

I HAVE four children, a wonderful husband, a pool (I still feel snooty about that one even though virtually every other person in Florida has one...), too many things

I GET FRUSTRATED WHEN my house gets messy five minutes after I clean it, I have too many things going on at one time, and food prices out growing my growing family

I VALUE honesty, a job well done, friends, family, quiet time to do something I WANT to do

I WISH I could stay in one place for a long, long time, I could feel like we could just get a little "ahead", I could bike more

I FEAR the future of our downward spiraling country, losing one of my children to the dark side, not doing everything I should be doing as a mom

I DISLIKE slow drivers, snakes, my metabolism, and fun days that are much too short

I LOVE BIKING (and don't get enough of it right now), time with family and friends, chocolate, the giggles of my little children, and the much too few fun, relaxed moments at home when everyone is around laughing and enjoying being together

I TAG Jared, Shelly, Michelle, Monica, and Sara

Quote for the day

As already mentioned, my children love Mythbusters. (probably says WWAAYYYY tooo much about my children...) This afternoon, due to some mercy from mom, they were watching a few minutes of the show where they are trying to scare Jamie and Adam with creepy crawlers. The tarantulas come out and I ask Chase, "Would you be scared by those things?"

In his very indignant Chase like way he replies "NNoooooo, I don't have arachnophobia!!"

I merely stand and blink...

The Office

Chase and Delainy spend many an hour and many a ream of paper in the "dining room" which I now call the "Kid's office." They have access to markers, crayons, dot paints, and stickers and love spending loads of time drawing.

Ode to Emma

Matt's cousin Shelly has a daughter, Emma, who is rather famous for the locations and positions where/how she can fall asleep. Here's Delainey's tribute to Emma:

She sneaked out of her room after being put to bed to do a little reading in the living room:



This one is when she got stung by what we think were japanese wasps and she was incredibly uncomfortable and would only sleep with her legs at a 90 degree angle:



Asleep on mom (not a flattering picture of mom I might add):



And finally, with a buddy, on the way home from school:

Cousin Sighting

Matt's cousin Paul, and his family drove over for church and then dinner while they were in Orlando for a Disney visit. Delainey quickly took to her girl second cousins, showering them with hugs when they left:

Hail to the Honey Crisp!!!

I am an apple snob....there's no way around it. Living in Michigan, to some extent, ruined apples for me. Michigan has so many varieties, and when you can just go pick grapefruit sized apples off the tree BEFORE they are waxed...ahhh bliss!!! My favorite of all time is the Honey Crisp, a relatively newer variety. It tastes just about how it sounds-especially the "crisp" part. We left Michigan and I feared that I would never have Honey Crisp apples again.

In Pennsylvania I found them in the grocery store!! Bought them two bags at a time in spite of their slightly higher cost. Worth every penny, although still not as good as right of the tree. My friend, Stacy, was terrific-ly kind enough to send me a batch via the USPS.

So, now we're in Florida, the land of citrus. Apples anyone?? Every year in early September (where fall may be showing up in someplaces) I think of apple picking in Michigan. The first two weeks of September are when the Honey Crisp are ready. (note that I do NOT know when any other variety is ready) I depaired, but today, in a Super Target 20 minutes from my house I found Honey Crisp apples!! I'm still gleaming with excitement!! I also bought them out!! (there were only 2 1/2 pounds) Are they as good as Michigan apples-Yeah Right! But I'm excited nontheless and I think I shall refuse to share with the lesser mortals in my house!!!

Yeah for Honey Crisp!!

You can never go home again....

We've moved a lot. People have moved more, but we've moved a lot. We have met some of the most amazing people and have such wonderful friends. I've been spending probably too much time browsing through blogs lately. (it's great how you can link from one to another and find all kinds of friends) As I have I must admit that it breaks my heart a bit. It's a privilege to know all our friends, but so amazingly sad that we can't see them anymore except on blogs.

So as you all "drive by" know that I miss you all terribly and love that I know you all at the same time!!

Little Ballerina

The pictures aren't that great, but it's a little glimpse into our little dancer!! Hope you enjoy and I'll try to get some better pictures (for Grandma's sake!

Out of the mouth of babes...

Delainey usually stays home with Andrew while I take Braden and Chase to school. Yesterday when I arrived home, Andrew greeted me with "Mom, did you know that three plus four equals cat?" Delainey had been busy teaching him all kinds of facts.

Chase had to have some fairly major dental work this morning. His pediatric dentist is about 45 minutes away and does these prodcedures outpatient at the hospital. I had to be up at 4:00 this morning to arrive at 5:30. When I went out to the car to leave the house it was raining, courtesy of Tropical Storm Hanna. As we were getting close to the hospital I heard this little voice (who I thought was sleeping) say, "Mom is this Gustav or that Hanna thing?" Welcome to hurricane season Chase..

And finally, for all the more geeky people...This afternoon Delainey was doing some art work at the table repeating to herself "Don't try this at home" After a few times Chase jumped in and said "Hey mom, I'm Adam!" Delainey quickly jumped in with "I'm Jamie!" Chase proceeded to proclaim "and you mix milk with water and BOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!" to which Delainey replies "Seriously folks, DON'T try this at home!" Are you stymied? That would be from Mythbusters on the Discovery channel. (we only have like 36 hours of Mythbusters on our new DVR)

Words from school

Chase, day three;

"Mom, you don't have to pack me a lunch-they have one there for me already!!"

Conversation with Braden, day four:

Braden: "today was just average"

Mom: "What would make it better than average?"

Braden: "More math and science"

Andrew, on day three, declares his love and devotion for Yoo-hoos. And on day four, is excited about the Technology Student Association which helps lesson the blow of not making the basketball team....(hard to make when you're competing against 14 and 15 year olds even when you're 1/4 inch shy of 6 feet at 12!)

First Day of School

August 18th was the first day of school! Then Tropical Storm Fay came through and the kids were out the rest of the week!!! Here's a look at them for their first days:

Andrew 8th(wow!)grade



Braden 4th grade



We are trying to ride our bikes to school. I was hoping we would miss the rain in the afternoon the first day, but we didn't. We got soaked, but it was a bit fun since it wasn't storming. We all just peeled out of our wet clothes, put on swim suits and jumped into the pool!



And finally, our newest school attender Chase in kindergarten (just this morning)

Tropical Storm Fay 4:00 PM

Tropical storm Fay is coming our way! OK, she's really already here, but the eye of the storm is slated to land right on top of us in a few hours. This morning we went out in swim suits to slog out the ditch in front of our house and the neighbors to the left (an empty house) so our flow is better!

To the right of our house (looking out)



In front of our house:



Down the road and to the left:



We'll post more later!!

Olympics party-make your own flag

For an activity during the opening ceremonies we made Olympic flags out of m&m's. Fortunately my mom picked up the HUGE bag, because we learned that yellow m&m's are in the minority.

Sorting:



Chase's finished product:



Braden's hard work:



Delainey's cute mug and flag:

Olympics Party Part One

OK, so everyone knows I'm CRAZY about the Olympics!! So here's a bit of our celebration photos. In case you notice, we couldn't find green streamers so we "colored" the white one green. It didn't work very well...



Braden, Chase, and Delainey made the Olympic flag all by themselves:

Little fishes part three

Braden and a painfully slow backstroke (he wasn't really into performing):



One of Delainey's "tricks":

Little Fishes-part two

Now for Chase:

Little fishes-part one

We have a pool!! Yeah for energy release!! Three of the kids took swimming lessons, with the focus being on Delainey so I could feel comfortable having a pool. It's so fun to see her swim along with the others. I especially love to watch them swim underwather! Here's a few short videos of them swimming.


Lainey first:
>

Blogger is taking forever to upload video, so I'm going to do this one at a time!1

Look out kindergarten!!

Chase has become enamoured with math lately, specifically division. He asks gives us problems to solve, usually a smaller number divided by a larger one. Today I was trying to explain that you need to divide a large number by a small one (trying to keep it simple) so I used two problems.

If I have four apples and you and Delainey want to share the appples, how many do you each get? It takes a minute, but he figures it out and I point out that he was making groups from a large number. That's how you divide a large number by a small number.

To try to show how tricky it is the other way around, I said-

If I have two apples and four people want apples, how many do you each get? Without the SLIGHTEST pause he says "HALF!"

Higher math anyone???

Pin the tail on the donkey

My dad was playing around with Chase and Delainey. One thing led to another and they were playing their own homemade version of Pin the Tail on the donkey!! It was fun to see my dad playing with them and it was a great education and lots of fun for the kids!

A picture is worth a thousand words

Watching TV

Ok, so I've never claimed my children were normal, but here's some insight into how Chase "watches" TV:

Admittedly, the photographer needs some help:



These pictures were taken in fairly rapid succession. I totally understand the need to campaign to have children turn off the tv and move more, but when kids "watch" tv like this who needs exercise?

How did your Sabbath begin??

Our began with a little visitor on the back porch!! Braden went out to the porch, came in quickly and said "Mom, there's a snake on the porch!" To which I said, "yeah, right!" But I looked outside and look what I saw:



Matt had a rude awakening and became the snake wrangler with Andrew as wary assistant:



He got away between the pillowcase and the back door and we were unable to catch him and take him to a new place. Gotta love coral snakes in the morning!

Ode to Ratatouille

I have been buying these mini-peppers at Sam's club lately. They cost less than regular large yellow, orange, and red peppers and are a lot more fun!! Chase is our fruit/veggie man and he was enjoying eating the peppers right out of the bag. He took it a step further by picking up a strawberry and recreating the scene in Ratatouille where Remy takes a bite of one thing (strawberry)

then a bite of another thing (pepper)

then puts them together...

It was funny because he closed his eyes after each bite just like Remy does! Silly kid!