I am no longer MIA!!--Jan 1

I know....I know. Again, it has been a long time between posts, but since Tim couldn't read the blog from his computer, I was more concerned with sending him pictures and having him catch up. Not that I don't love you all, but I do have priorities!

So, I will briefly let you know what exciting adventures we have been having since I last posted.....

We had a birthday party for Tara. It was a lot of fun and she had a few friends over while we attempted to make pizza. It certainly is more difficult when Tim is not here because it doesn't flow as smoothly, but we managed.


We also took a drive over to the Apple Festival I had been wanting to go see for years. My girls took the camera and took more "artsy" type pictures than pictures of us there, but they did turn out nice.



During this trip we also went and visited our friends with the Great Dane puppies. I needed to make a decision about what we wanted to do about him so I wanted to see him again.


A few weeks later I took Jenna to a football game. We had a good time and it was
good mother/daughter time.


We had also made the decision to get the puppy. His name is Duncan and we brought him home that weekend. He started out small, but is growing like a weed.


Here he is in another week or so...


And the next week....


And in another few weeks...


And a few weeks after that....He is getting quite large (54 lbs at last weigh-in)


In all the growing of Duncan, we celebrated Christmas. We started out the season with Thanksgiving and Alyssa's birthday celebrated on the same day. Here is Alyssa with her big gift from us....Rock Band for the Xbox 360.


We went to my brother's to celebrate Thanksgiving and I got a cute picture with some of the cousins (I don't know where Alyssa and Sammy were at this time).


After Thanksgiving and Alyssa's birthday was Christmas preparations. We had a beautiful Women's Christmas event at our church that I shared the responsibility of being in charge of decorating with my friend, Karen. We decorated with old fashioned toys and "Christmasy stuff". Alyssa sang the song "Heirlooms" by Amy Grant and it was so beautiful! I got to read the Christmas story to a few little girls so we all got to wear our pajamas for the whole event. One of the little girls was Tara.




I worked hard before Christmas decorating the stage for Christmas. This is one of my new "ministries" at church. Each week I attend the creative meeting at church and then we try to somehow visually capture the sermon theme. Most weeks it is fairly simple, but for Christmas we decorated much more elaborately. We were also decorating for the adult musical so it had to incorporate everything we were doing on the stage. I don't have any pictures now, but hope to take some before we take it down tomorrow. The adult musical was something else that kept me very busy during this season. It turned out very nicely and it was so nice to not have to worry about any special parts or lines and just sing in the choir this year. The last few years I have had some sort of main role and this year I knew that God was calling me to use my talents to be just a part of the choir. It was a real blessing!

Then came Christmas. The girls and I had a really nice time just celebrating in the morning by ourselves. We made a birthday coffeecake for Jesus and blew out candles and then opened gifts. Since Duncan was our main gift and Tim is bringing a few things home, we didn't have a lot to open, but they were things the girls really wanted and they enjoyed them.



We got all the girls the game, Rock Band, for the Xbox 360 for Christmas and they can all play it together so it is really fun and nice to see them cooperating and helping Tara.


That night we went to dinner at Tim's parents' house and Tim's dad made a wonderful roast beef along with all the sides. I made a linzertorte for dessert that turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Since then we have been taking it a little easy and last night I went to the neighbor's for their New Year's Eve party, Sammy spent the night at a friends' house, Jenna and Alyssa went to their friends', Kyle and Derek's, house to celebrate their 18th birthdays after I got back from the neighbor's house. Jenna babysat Tara and our other neighbors, Megan and Tyler, until we came home. It was a really nice evening and we all got to do something that was fun.