Cousins

Well, our family is taking it easy tonight. We already have the boys in bed and Randy and I will celebrate the new year tonight with some peace and quiet. We had a great Christmas and got to see lots of family and even got to meet our new cousin Elizabeth. We started the week at my parents home and ended our travels Saturday coming home from from Greenville Iliinois where Randy's sister lives. Sunday I went with some girls from church to see The Great Debaters (wonderful movie) and out to eat. So we are tired and relaxing this evening.

Here are pictures...enjoy

Jake and Mikah

Mikah's first taste of cereal

Jake playing blowing on the Wi at his cousins house. He has a bruise on his forhead from bringing his hand up so high after his bowling that the remote flew up and hit him in the forhead HA!


My new niece Elizabeth

The cousins

Jake's new cool toy from Mimi and Grandpa. It took Ramdy and I forever to install it, just to find that we couldn't get the dad gum moon to work. It would help if we hadn't temporarily lost the instructions to the moon. Well, we decided to leave the moon hanging for the time being until we could later return it to the store. So, we go to tuck the boys in and found the instructions and proceeded to turn the light off and tell the boys goodnight. As we flipped the lights off, the moon turned on. We read to instructions to find this helpful hint....
NOTE: In order for the moon to function properly, the room lights should be off.

Geez!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE NINJA UNDERWEAR WARRIORS!!!

Walking in a Winter StickyLand

I bought those little Pampered Chef glass bowls last weak in the hopes that they would help me cook some things in the toaster oven (our oven issue is a whole blog in itself). Anyway, I thought I had a wise idea to make the little cakes with the bowls into Christmas trees and make a "Winter Wonderland" type sceen with them. Well, this is what we ended up with :) Most likely I will never be a gourmet chef, but the boys and I sure had a lot of fun tonight. And we sure were sticky when we finished!

Abilene

Well we spent 7 plus hours on the road today, but it was so worth it. When Randy was coaching in Ferris, we had one of his student/football players live with us for eight months until it was time to take him out to begin his college years at Hardin Simmons University. Well, today he walked the stage and received his diploma! We are sooo pround of you Snyder!!! (His name is Randy also, but when you have two Randy's living in the same house, it was easier to call him by his last name) Snyder will be heading out to Arlington to become a police officer, while his sweetie Shanna finishes up one more semester of school...here are some pictures of our happy day.

The Graduate!!!!

Walking the stage! Randy and Shanna. Snyder, you have made a lot of good choices over the last four years, but Shanna is by far the best one you have made yet! I believe she is a keeper!!!

The boys were sooooo well behaved today. They had to sit 4 hours in the car, then get out and sit and eat lunch. Then go sit for an hour to get front row seats for graduation. Then sit another hour and 1/2 for the ceremony. Then sit through a 2 hour adult conversation at dinner (wow, I can't believe I just called you an adult, Snyder). Then sit for the 3 1/2 hours coming home. We let them have a little loud and rowdy fun in the car on the way home tickling each other. Randy and I were willing to put up with the noise since they had been good all day long.
The Boys Having Fun

I didn't realize that my camera wouldn't video with the light on, so this starts out dark and I tell Randy to turn on the light in the car and then you can see what Jake is doing to Bradley while he is yelling TICKLE...

I Feel Loved

So our staff at the school does the whole Secret Santa thing this week. For various reasons, I chose not to participate. I just couldn't justify spending the $40 for me to get stuff all week. Well turns out, I'm the only one who didn't sign up and I knew that before the whole event was finalized and the santa's were picked, but I still didn't think I should do it. Well some sweet elf full of Christmas Joy shared some of the spirit with me today and gave me this CUTE snowman ornament. It made me so happy, and what a sweet person to do that! No one from work reads my blog (at least to my knowledge no one does), but I wish they did because they could see a big THANK YOU!

And I also had to post a picture of our tree this year. My parents got one of the new pre lit trees so we got their old one, lights and all. It is such an upgrade from our 4 foot tree we have had for our entire marriage. Funny thing is when we put up this tree Bradley said ,"man, our tree last year Jake was so much bigger than this." Ha so funny to see how they remember things!

And time to close with pictures of my sweet pirate!


And my little pirate showing off his Karate moves...hmmm....I think he may be a little confused.