Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas this year. I don't have any pictures b'c the wrong camera card was in the camera and we can't get the pics off that card. Wed. evening we had a Christmas Eve service at the church. We had around 50 for that. It went pretty good. The church in Fredonia sent out gifts so we were able to pass out some gifts then.

We were going to go to our house to open our gifts after church, but we were invited to someone's house after church so they could give our kids some things. Well, it was 9:45 when we left there. My mom's church had sent out gifts for our kids and for another family in the church. We decided to open the gifts from Scott's family and the ones from Blue Knob on Christmas eve. Then on Christmas morning, the kids could open the gifts from us. The kids had A LOT of fun. (I wish I had pictures :(. )

Donald and Rachel came over around 1 and we had lunch with them. We played games until about 6:30 or so then they left. After that, we delivered the gifts from Blue Knob to the other kids. It was fun watching them open them ;).

Computer Crash!!!

I hope we have a learned a lesson out of the computer happenings of the last couple weeks. While Dad was here, we did some work on the computer and ended up losing all my pictures. There was a chance we were going to be able to take it to someone and have them find them for us. Well, as of last night, that won't be happening. My computer crashed last night and we had to redo everything....once again we lost quite a few pictures. Thankfully I have the few that are on the blog already, but I don't have the ones of us opening our presents with Mom and Dad b'c cause I hadn't loaded them on here. Hopefully we will have learned to backup our pics one way or another!!!!!

Open House

We had what is going to be our annual Christmas open house. I used to made up trays like my mom did (except the cookies don't look near as nice as hers) and give them out at Christmas time. Then Scott came up with the idea of having an open house. We did it one year and it was nice, but not a whole lot of people showed up. A friend of mine came and brought all the siblings she had to babysit and that made things loud. Well, we didn't do it the next year but we have done it the last two years and it has worked out pretty good. The only problem is, I made enough cookies to pass out cookies to everyone instead of just making enough for the evening. I have 11 one gallon ziploc bags of cookies left over....enough for 2 more open houses. I'm going to give plates of cookies to some of the ones that didn't come and that will help get rid of some of them. Otherwise, the next picture anyone sees of me will be quite large ;)

I think I was able to get pictures of everyone that came over.

Kori

Shylah

Miss Stedronsky....our neighbor

Patricia Troyer (and Garrett) David Troyer
Ray, Charlotte and Esther Meador
Titus MarksHis wife, Bertha Berta (Bertha's twin sister and Kori and Shylah's Grandma)Moe and Mary Jo Parker

(Scott forgot to send out my Christmas cards so some of them were hand delivered and we had to call a few people and let them know about. Moe and his wife, Mary Jo were invited about 2 hours before it started. I really didn't expect them to come since it was short notice. Well, I thought wrong!!! After Mary Jo was done at the school, they came over!!)

As you can tell, there wasn't very many there, but we had a good time visiting with the ones that did!!!!

New Look

I let Garrett pick my blog background. If you keep the writing in the black, you can read it okay :) Kids are so much fun ;)

Mimi

Mom and Donavan raking leaves
Mom, Donavan and Garrett

Mom talking to Donald and playing with Donavan

Yes, they made her chase the ball across the road

Mom waiting for Donavan to send the ball her way

Here are some pictures of Mom enjoying her time here. Garrett decided he wanted to be nice and rake the neighbor lady's yard. He raked for about 10 minutes or so and came in and said he was too tired. I told him he really should finish what he started and Mom offered to keep him company while he worked. Little did she know she would spend the next 2 hours raking leaves and putting them in trash bags :) Donavan and Antonia decided to join in the fun too.

The other pictures are of her and Donavan playing ball. Donavan finally convinced her to go outside (it was kinda chilly) and they played until it got too dark.

My kids are still wishing Mimi was out here and I'll have to admit, their mom sometimes wishes she was still out here too:)

My roses!!!

These are the flowers Scott got me in November. This is one of the few times I have been able to keep roses for a long time. These were very pretty. I told Mom he got them for me and of course her first response was, "What did he do?"

Supper at Donald and Rachel's

Donavan "playing" Donald's guitar

Donavan and a puppy

Mom helping Rachel while I took pictures

(sounds like a nice arrangement to me :))

I even got a picture of Scott holding one of the dogs!!!











My sister-in-law, Rachel

These are a few pictures from when Donald and Rachel had us all up for supper. We were supposed to eat at 7:00. Mom, Dad and the 3 older kids went up early so Mom and Dad would have time to visit with Donald and Rachel. I waited until Scott got back from hunting to go up. On the way up we hit another deer. Thankfully we hadn't fixed the car from the first time it happened and the only thing is really did was damage the hood more than it already was.

Rachel's dog had puppies and the kids loved playing with them. Charity really liked them until they started pulling on her clothes, then she wanted nothing to do with them. Garrett is our animal lover and he would have taken all 9 of the puppies home. Donald and Rachel probably would have let him too ;).

Now for the pictures!!!

Here is the one picture I got at our Thanksgiving Dinner with the church people. Charity doesn't usually go to people when I'm holding her. I was busy trying the help get last minutes stuff done and she was fussy. Agnes Jahn offered to hold her so I gave Charity to her. Thankfully Charity stayed with her for awhile. After I get some cookies made I'll put some more pics on!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Today we had Christmas with my mom and dad. Mom, Dad, Donald and Rachel helped me wrap the gifts we had bought for tonight and also for our Christmas. Somehow, one of Garrett's gifts that he was supposed to get at Christmas was put in the pile for today. It was a camera! He has really been enjoying that gift.
Mom and Dad are leaving either tonight or tomorrow. It is 10 pm already so I'm kinda thinking they might leave tomorrow. Anyway, after they leave I will try to get some pictures on here.
Hope you all had a good day!!!

I got out of Shopping today!!!

Thanks to a conflict in schedules between us and our babysitter, we didn't go shopping today:) I got stuff ready for church today and we will be going tomorrow! I probably missed out on some good sales, but I missed the huge crowds, too.

David Troyer


Esther holding Antonia and listening to Garrett read

Jerry and Scott

Mrs. Troyer, Charlotte Meador and Philip Meador


Garrett reading to Rachel

Can you tell what he likes to do?

Here are a few snapshots from our dinner. We didn't have as many people as we expected. The one couple was asked to help serve at the Thanksgiving Dinner at the community center so they didn't come. We had too much food of course and had a good time.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!! We had a very nice dinener yesterday with some of the church people, now we are getting ready for our Dinner today. I only got ONE picture last night, but I'm gonna post it later anyway! Have a great day today!!!!

Hello!!

Just thought I'd let you know I do have some pictures for on here, but you probably won't get to see them until Mom and Dad leave. Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm kinda excited for ours. We are going to have about 12 people coming. Plus we are having a Thanksgiving dinner for the church tomorrow night. Who knows how many will be there ;)

Four more days!

"What is that?" you ask? That is Donavan's countdown till Mimi and Pappy Jackson gets out here. The kids are very excited. As you can see, they have 4 days to wait. Scott is saying "14 days till they leave." LOL!!!!

Where's the Baby (Instead of Where's Waldo?)

Where's the baby?

Aaaahh! There she is!
We've had fun!!

Garrett decided to have a little fun with Charity. This was the results. She enjoyed itenough that she didn't want me to take her out.

They Sleep Where?

As some of you know, my kids like to sleep everywhere BUT their bedroom. Occasionally I will make them sleep there, but for now, they sleep in the livingroom most of the time. When I went to bed last night, Antonia was sleeping on the floor. This morning when I got up, I couldn't find her. Afer a while, I found her behind the endtable. There isn't much room, but tonight the kids were fighting over who would get to sleep behind the endtable. I have a few ideas for what I could turn their bedrooms into until they decide they'd like to sleep in them again :)

Well, it is about 8 days until Mom and Dad get out here. Tomorrow Garrett will have his extra done so he can have the time off while they are out here. Donavan has a little over half of his work done. Today was a really good day for Donavan. Hopefully he works that good tomorrow.
Other then doing extra time in school there hasn't been much happening.
Oh yeah, we did hit a deer with our car. One of Scott's friends was giving him a rough time and told him he couldn't get one in the woods so he had to hit it with the car. It did about 3,000 dollars worth of damage. If i have time, I'll put some pictures on in a couple days.

Canning

I decided to give canning a try this year. I've enjoyed it for the most part...especially because Scott would help cut stuff up in the evening :) The kids enjoyed helping some, too. Donavan especially enjoyed it if it got him out of school work. Below are some pictures of Garrett helping me can applesauce. I want to say a special "Thank you" to Pat Troyer and Charlotte Meador for all their help. Pat and her husband let us use half their garden since we don't have anywhere to plant one. I also used her canner when she wasn't using it.

I caught Charity mopping my floor the one day. She looked like she was really enjoying herself.

ZZZZZZzzzzzz

I told the boys if they worked enough extra they wouldn't have to do school work while Mimi and Pappy Jackson were out here. The are leaving to come out Nov. 20th and staying until the 2nd of December. Because of that, it is 10:00 and my boys are doing some school work. Garrett likes school so I will probably have to make him quit when Donavan is done. Donavan hates it so I don't think he will be working much later. I told him "hate" was a strong word, but that was what he wanted in there so.....
Thankfully tomorrow is Saturday so they will be able to sleep in for a while. Who knows...maybe we'll start having school in the evenings all the time if Donavan will work better then. HA!!

um....I put a new post on here, but it didn't put it where I thought it would so you have to scroll down the page to find the new one...it's the one about the Memorial Dedication. Have a nice day!!!

Happy Anniversary to us.....

Yesterday was our anniversary. It is hard to believe we have been married 12 years! We dropped the kids off at the babysitters Friday evening....thanx Esther.... and spent the night in Mitchell. Someone told us you know you're from a small town if going to Mitchell is your idea of a celebration. Unknown to me, Scott had made arrangements with Esther and her mom and they decorated the room for him. He had roses and chocolates already there. We picked the kids up Saturday and went home. I thought all the surprises were done, but after I had been home awhile, I found out he had bought me the bedspread I had been looking at the last time we were in Wal-mart. I had wanted it then, but decided to wait awhile to get it. I was maybe going to get it after Christnas. While we were gone he had a friend from work put it on our bed. How did I return the favor? Saturday evening he wanted a pop really bad. I went and bought me a Mt. Dew and was to get him a Diet Pepsi. I brought home a regular Pepsi. Talk about treating my man right!!! I did make him some iced tea although that's not the same as pop when you are wanting it really bad ;)
I will have to say it has been a wonderful 12 years. I'm glad he puts up with me!!

Creation Museum

Here are some pictures from our visit to the Creation Museum. We only spent about 4 hours there. We could have been there longer, but Charity was tired and we didn't take our stroller with us (I didn't notice until we were halfway through that we could have rented one), and my poison ivy was driving me CRAZY!!!

Enjoying the petting zoo

What are they planning?

We probably took a hundred pictures while we were there, but I won 't post them all here ;)

Aunt Debbie

Enjoying the food

Me, Charity, Mom and Gram

The day we left PA to come back to SD, the Victims united Survivors Group had a dedication service for the stone they placed in front of the courthouse. It was a nice service. There was speeches from representatives of several government officials and some singing. Then they had the ribbon cutting ceremony and unveiled the stone. Eventually they are planning on engraving the names of the vicitims on the stone. Of course there was food afterwards :)