Christmas Pageant 2009

It's hard to believe that this year's Christmas pageant has already come and gone.  It was a really cute program.  Three of our kids were supposed to be in it.  Adriana did an outstanding job narrating, along with the other 2 girls her age.  Nathaniel did an outstanding job, as well, as a shepherd.  He recited his lines beautifully in unison with the other little shepherds.  And then there was Gabe.  Hmmm.  He did a great job screaming about not participating.  He was dressed up for a few pictures and then quickly wasn't!  However, he did a great job sitting with Daddy and Grandma!  There's always next year!

Here's a few pictures from this year's!

Adriana...our little Narrator!

 

 

Nathaniel...our little Shepherd !

 

Gabriel...our little Traveler that never ended up performing!!

 

Samuel...trying to read the program!

 

The Shepherds

The whole group...Great job everyone!!!

Grandma Jo came to town...

We just had a wonderful time with Grandma Jo.  Unfortunately, I have been going through my pictures and realized that we didn't take many pictures while she was here.  There was one outing that we did capture with pictures....NYC!!!  My mom and I kept quite busy.  We were able to catch up on a lot, go to a few of our favorite stores together, sew together, and she babysat for us so Aaron and I could actually go out on a date!  Mom/Grandma kept really busy with the kids, as well.  Mom had brought with her the game, "BLINK".  What a hit that was!  The kids couldn't get enough.  They loved to play it...especially against Grandma!!!  In fact, what a great bargaining tool for the kids when they were getting ready for school.  We'd say, "if you're totally ready for school, you can play around with Grandma"!  Worked every time!!!
It was such a nice relaxing visit.  The one day/night that was a little crazy was last Friday.  My mom and I took Adriana out of school to go into New York City.  Wow.  We had a very fun time, but also a huge adventure!  We were going to take the train, but due to a few minor events like missing the exit for our train station and finding another train station only to find that there were no available spots...we decided to drive in to the city.  Oh my goodness!  We parked amazingly close to Broadway...the heart of Times Square!  In fact, when we needed to leave the street we were on was a one way...going to Broadway!  I have never seen so many cabs, people jay walking all over the place in my life!  God is good...we made it home safely and I didn't run over any pedestrians in the city!  ;0)    While we were there, we went to the American Girl Place, saw Fox News station, saw Rockefeller Plaza, the big tree, the ice skaters, went to the M&M store (which by the way is a 3 story store that doesn't have any M&M's in it except for $12 pound bags you can fill against the wall!), and the Hershey store.  We decided to do dinner on the way home after stepping into a couple of restaurants to find that there was over an hour wait at each!  It was a really fun, exciting, exhausting bonding day with Grandma Jo and Adriana!   Well worth the stressful driving!  ;-)

 

Thanksgiving 2009....a rather unusual, yet eventful one!

It's been a while since I've posted.  There's so much that has kept us busy that I've been lacking time to share our family's events!  Thanksgiving has come and gone, and now we are on to Christmas.  Our family had such a nice and relaxing day on Thanksgiving, that I thought I'd share it with you...

Every holiday is different in our house.  Because we live so far away from family, we never know if we'll have visitors for that holiday until shortly before.  Well this year, we actually didn't have any visitors at Thanksgiving...and we won't for Christmas.  As sad as that is, we are so thankful to God for blessing us with an incredible church family and a wonderful area to live!  In order to make a new tradition for our family (as we've been really good at doing since living here) we decided to get up early and go into the city for the parade!  The kids had no idea what to expect!  It was great because we arrived shortly after the parade started (around 9ish am) and we parked in such an area that brought us to the end of the parade route!  It was awesome because where we were standing, the floats would go to our left to be deflated and the bands/famous people would go to our right for pictures/to get out of public eye!  We were actually standing right behind the tv cameraman!  The kids LOVED it and of course, so did Aaron and I!  When we arrived home (around 1ish pm), we made a ham (Aaron and I aren't huge turkey fans!) and our family's favorite side dishes.  We played games, enjoyed our dinner, and did puzzles.  Not such a boring day, after all! 

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

My Montage 12/12/09 at OneTrueMedia.com