Christmas Favorites

A short list (in no particular order) of our favorites from this Christmas:

--Taking the kids to Target, filling up a basket full of toys, and delivering them (and even wrapping them this year) at Brother Bill's Helping Hand in Southwest Dallas

--Making a gingerbread house with Daddy



--Watching "Its a Wonderful Life", "The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey" and "Charlie Brown's Christmas" as a family

--Eggnog! Sweet potatoes with marshmallows! Nell's homemade fudge!

--Reading "What God Wants for Christmas" each of the 7 nights leading up to Christmas, and having everyone open up box #7 on Christmas Eve!

--Decorating the house. Chuck's and my favorite tree is in the formal living room, with all of the silver bells, but the kids like the one in the family room, with all of their clay ornaments and glass ornaments, the best. This year, the kids even had a small tree in the upstairs loft decorated with their own handmade ornaments.

--Delivering Christmas 'sussies' to all of our friends, and receiving all of the fun sussies from others on our doorstep.

--Running to the mailbox each day to get the next batch of Christmas cards -- So fun to get all of the pictures and letters from friends new and old.

--Painting Christmas gifts with Charlie at Purple Glaze. What a sweet big brother ... he made a pink cross with purple dots on it for Mimi. On the front, he put "best friend" and on the back "Mimi, you are my best friend and I love you".


--Seeing the looks on the kids' faces when they opened up a special Christmas gift. Favorites this year: Daddy's "moustache" t-shirt, Mimi's Leapster L-max, Charlie's webkinz and scooter and Cooper's teething toys. My favorites are my new iphone and the gorgeous Cathy Waterman pendant and necklace from Ylang/23 that Chuck and the kids got me to begin replacing my jewelry that was stolen in our robbery last month!




--Listening to Mimi's versions of our favorite Christmas carols .... like "Tingle Bells" and "the Ha La La La Song"!

--Having a fire in the fireplace even though it is 60-plus degrees outside!

--Our annual playgroup parents Christmas party. This year the highlights were a toss-up between seeing Dan have to dress up in a gorilla suit and go door-to-door asking the Bozman's neighbors for gray poupon, and seeing Tyler Whann "win" the prize of getting to dress up in a pimp costume!

--Finally, as Charlie and Mimi put it ... "Getting to give gifts to people, getting toys, and celebrating Jesus' birthday!"

Finally ... Christmas!

Christmas day with 3 kids is exhausting!

We spent the morning here, afternoon with Dad and Peni, and the evening with Mark and Peggy. Whew!

Materialism overload. Glad it is only once a year.

Christmas Eve

Christmas eve already!
We went to the 3 p.m. service at church, and the kids enjoyed being in the service with us. Afterward, we had everyone over for Christmas Eve dinner here. Chuck had told me to get a 10 lb. chateaubriand, and it was at least 2x too much meat! But it was still great! I had the sides catered so it was relatively relaxing ...

We let the kids open up one gift on Christmas eve, and Charlie opened up 2 webkinz animals fromn grandmommy (which he LOVES!!!) and Amelia Grace got the "real" Belle dress with the cape from Gigi. It even came with a wig, gloves and purse, and she looks just like Beauty. She will probably sleep in it, too!

And it looks like Santa made a stop at our house tonight ...

Visiting Santa

We made our visit to Santa and it was very cute. But try getting a good photo of three kids and Santa!
Here is what they asked for:
Charlie -- a red razor scooter and lots of transformers
Amelia -- a dolly that looks 'just like her' and a scooter

Cooper obviously didn't ask for anything, but can you believe how huge he is!?! We have started referring to him as 'the blob'.

preparing for Christmas

OK, I'm going to **pretend** that I've been up to date on the blog, and fill in what has been going on lately...

We have been busily preparing for Christmas. Whew! The kids are wrapping up with school and activities for the year, which has included parties galore. Charlie was a wise man in his nativity play, which is pretty humorous in itself. Mimi had her Christmas ballet performance for the parents, which was sweet. And Cooper is recovering from his black eyes resulting from his broken nose...

Welcome Home, Carsen and Lauren!

Great news!
I just got an email that Amy and Chris are on their way to the hospital to bring home not one, but TWO babies! Carsen and Lauren are finally healthy enough and strong enough to come home. What great, amazing news! I'm sure Amy and Chris could not have gotten a better Christmas gift. We can't wait to meet the precious girls in person ...
Amy also is doing so much better. I was shocked when she and peyton came to Mimi's birthday party a couple of weeks ago. But so excited too! I think she still gets tired easily, but is recovering well from all of her surgeries.

Thanks for all of you who have been praying for Amy and the twins, as well as Chris and her other two girls, Peyton and Parker.

Also keep Gage Holmes in your prayers, as he was admitted back to children's yesterday (Christmas) for low blood counts and fever.

Thankful for CHRISTmas!

Tonight as I write this, I am so thankful for the wonderful blessings that the Lord has bestowed upon us this year!

First and foremost, He blessed us with a wonderful, healthy baby boy in our sweet Cooper. What a joy he is! I am enjoying going through all of the 'baby moments' again with him ... it feels like so long since we did any of this with Charlie and Mimi. He gets excited over the sweetest and smallest things -- like just walking up the stairs with me is an exciting adventure! He is crawling everywhere and getting into everything. This is a shock for the older kids, but nice to see that they are keeping their toys picked up!

Secondly, we have such a wonderful group of friends here in Dallas that we are walking through life with. They encourage us, love on us, admonish us and pray for us. I have truly seen the body of Christ in action through the love of His servants this year. We've laughed with them at numerous Christmas parties, served with them in one of Dallas' poorest neighborhoods, worshipped with them at church, cheered with them at sporting events, laughed together at our sweet kids at school performances, etc. Wow! I was reading through all of the names we are sending out Christmas cards to this year (close to 300!) and was overwhelmed by our good fortune in this area.

I've personally been blessed to be able to serve at CBS again on Leadership this year. If I had known how it would bless me to pour into these women (as much as someone with a newborn can!), I would have done it years ago!

We have health -- as we see so many friends struggling with serious illnesses in their families. We have happiness -- joy that really does come from the Lord is such a peace in the midst of the various big and small trials of life. We have a home over our heads -- as we saw last week during our yearly trip to Brother Bill's, there are so many around us who don't have that basic need. We have safety -- our recent robbery really showed us that even though we lost some valued items, at the end of the day, it is just STUFF. We have our precious children and each other. But most of all, we have our faith, which puts everything in its proper perspective.

This season gets so hurried and we don't want to ever forget the REAL reason that we celebrate Christmas: the Christ child who came to save us from our sins. As Isaiah fortold over 700 years before it actually happened, "The virgin will be with child and will birth to a son and call him Immanuel." Isaiah 7:14 We are so thankful for God's perfect provision for us in his One and Only Son, Jesus.

We pray that you would find new meaning in this season, as you reflect on God's great gift to us. Joy to the world!

wierd few weeks

In the midst of preparing numerous jewelry appraisals, etc., and trying to deal with all of the annoying details of being robbed, I feel like we are living under a bit of a black cloud. Now let's keep everything in perspective of course ... but when it rains, it pours!
--2 ...no make it AT LEAST 3, dead animals in the attic above our bedroom. (These are just the ones we have been able to locate; some fall into the walls and die) The construction next door has "disrupted the ecosystem" and all of the rodents are moving in. To our house. And dying. And smelling. Our bedroom and bathroom stink. Chuck has had a sinus infection, so he can't really smell it, but I am moving into Charlie's bunk bed if this persists.

--Cooper somehow managed to catapult his 8-month-old body out of his crib, ricochet off the bedside table, and fall on the floor. He broke his nose, but other than that and a few scrapes and bruises, is in one piece. Is this a sign of things to come? 2 boys=many trips to the ER. I will have nightmares for months about walking into his nursery and seeing him crying on the floor.

--Mimi sliced open her finger when a light from a Christmas tree exploded in her hand. Lots of tears and band aids and hugs, but she is one tough cookie.

--Cooper continues to vomit all over me ... at least once a day. Perhaps the reflux diagnosis was right?

--Our cleaning lady disappeared. Hasn't shown for 2 weeks now ... makes me wonder about her being somehow connected to the robbery? I don't mean to be negative, but it is hard not to think that.


Well, what a blessing kids are! Charlie, for once, is not the source of our problems! He is still his talkative, energetic self, but has actually been a help lately. And what would I do without my awesome husband? Well, he IS in NYC right now on business, but we are hanging in there and preparing for a wonderful first Christmas with "the Bruiser", aka Cooper.

Charlie is a wise man in his class nativity (they didn't mean "wise guy" did they?) and Mimi was a shepherd in hers. Cooper is now crawling everywhere and chewing everything, and has already gotten into the christmas presents under the tree.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Amelia!

We can't believe that our sweet little Mimi Grace is 4 years old! Wow, has time flown by!

She is such a blessing in our lives and such a joy to be around. She is creative, funny, sweet and incredibly smart. We are so proud of her!

We enjoyed her FABULOUS FOUR birthday party, in "Fancy Nancy" style. It was a posh mother/daugher tea that we held at our house. Feather boas and sparkley sunglasses were provided. What fun! The REAL Sleeping Beauty even made a guest appearance, and played some games and did makeovers on all of the fancy young ladies.

Did I mention that Daddy and Charlie got into the spirit too, complete with top hats, ascots and bow ties? They even helped serve up the croque monsiers and mini quiches!

Happy Birthday, sweetheart!

robbed

it amazes me how what someone does in 5-10 minutes can take you weeks to fix.
we were robbed while we were in FL ... someone broke in through our bedroom window and took a lot of stuff from our master suite. my closet was trashed, and they did get away with some things, but it could have been so much worse. thankfully, we had our alarm on and it did its job.

in other news, the kids, Chuck and I had a great trip to Florida and Disney. Photos to come soon...I will get a chance to breathe after Mimi's birthday party here tomorrow morning.

lately

in blog-time, it has been YEARS since I last posted an entry. Well, we have been busy here.

My mom visited for a long weekend last week, which was great. We even bought some aqua-dots the day before they were recalled! (You have to find excitement where you can find it!) We subsequently threw out all of the aquadots and resumed life as usual...

Mimi had photos taken for ballet ... Charlie had his last soccer game (vs. the other Prov. team!) ... Cooper is trying to crawl and is teething like mad ... Charlie finally got his Tony Romo jersey ... We have had more charity and birthday dinners every week, etc.

We leave Saturday for Florida to visit Chuck's mom. We haven't told the kids yet, but we are surprising them with a trip to Disneyworld! It should be a blast! We are really looking forward to it, and Charlie and Mimi will think they are in heaven! Cooper is staying with Chuck's mom for 2 nights, so we will get some good quality time in with our big kiddos.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Halloween!

We celebrated Halloween around here twice this year ... first at the Northwood Halloween party Friday night and then on Wednesday night on Halloween. We went to the Linder's party Wednesday night before heading out trick or treating in UP. You would think that 100-plus people would be crazy, but it was actually relatively calm and definitely a lot of fun.

Cooper was a shark at the Northwood party, which was perfect for the cool weather. But Wednesday night was warm -- in the mid-eighties -- so we resorted to a Batman (Batbaby?) costume. Mimi was Glinda the Good Fairy from the Wizard of Oz. (NOT Glinda the good WITCH -- because, as she will tell you, witches do NOT serve God! Our little witness!) Charlie was Captain Hook. He came in 3rd at the Northwood costume contest -- but Cooper would probably have won it all had we entered him. He kept the same startled and confused look on his face all night long ... as if to say, "Mom and Dad, why am I wearing blue foam again?" Very funny!

Last Soccer Game

Tuesday night was Charlie's last soccer game of the season. Their record was less than stellar (3-3-1), not due to the coaching of course -- probably because most of our practices were rained out. Charlie enjoyed being out on the field with his classmates. Their team will be together for the next few years.
Some photos from the last game of the Warriors and from the "award banquet" at Mr. Gatti's Pizza.

TX State Fair

Last Sunday, we went to the TX State Fair ... always a lot of fun for the kids. I can't say it is one of my favorite things to do -- the noise, crowds, heat and mess all wear on me. But the kids love the rides, the games, the petting zoo and especially the junk food.