Silly Songs with Aaron

This has nothing at all to do with Christmas except the fact that my sis-in-law got this great set of instruments for Aaron last year for Christmas. He still loves dragging them out and singing songs. This was particularly funny and i wanted to share with everyone. let me set the stage...imagine (if you can/will) a Veggietales video. There's always a place where Archibald the assparagus interupts and announces..."Silly Songs with Larry" Except this time he says, "silly songs with Aaron. the part of the day where Aaron comes out and sings a silly song. "

just incase you're wondering what song he's singing, it's We are the pirates who don't do anything.

enjoy!

More Christmas Hoopla

Well, we finally got around to our Christmas craft this year. Usually we do a gingerbread kit of some sort.WE've done trains (which my mom helped Andrew with one year, Thanks mom!), houses, and trees. We are starting to run out of kits. But this year i found one that's by crayola. instead of gingerbread, it's cake. It was real easy for the kids. I, of course, helped with the baking part, but andrew did all the mixing while aaron supervised. while the cakes baked, we had supper. then while they cooled we went out to look for all the cool Christmas lights. When we returned it was time to decorate! What fun!




Andrew's Cake.
Aaron's Cake.

as Rachel ray would say, Yum-mo!

Merry Christmas!

Random Christmas Hoopla!

Oh, this is fun! Mylinda has tagged me for this fun Christmas Hoopla. Here are the Rules:

1. List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas.
2. Please refer to it as a 'hoopla' and not the dreaded 'm'-word.
3. You have to specifically tag people when you're done. None of this "if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged" stuff is allowed...then nobody ends up actually doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you -- but the more, the merrier to get this 'hoopla' circulating through the blogosphere.
4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it and I'd like to get as many people involved as possible.

here goes:

1. I love Christmas music. i always try to get a new CD every year, but i haven't yet this year. my favorite CD is by Sawyer Brown. It's in my car right now so i can't even tell you the name of it. Most of the songs on it are originals and they are beautifully written. My two favorites are Mary Cries and Oh what a night in Bethlehem.
2. My favorite Christmas Carol is O Holy Night. One of my favorite versions is by Josh Groban. I would love to have a CD of nothing but that carol sung by different artists. I know, that's a little odd, but i would listen to it.
3. I love what Christmas is truly all about and i love to display my nativity year round. It reminds me of the greatest gift God has ever given us, His son Jesus Christ.
4. I collect Santa's . Mostly ornaments, but some statues as well. I do have 5 (i think) Santa's by Lenox, which are beautiful, but also a little too expensive these days (that's why i only have 5). My goal is to have enough Santa's to do a Christmas Tree in nothing but Santa! I haven't counted, but there are a lot of Santa's on the tree this year.
5. I you combine #3 and 4 you'll get my next favorite thing about Christmas, the Kneeling Santa. I love this image of Santa kneeling to pray at the manger. It's a subtle reminder that it's not about Santa Claus and even he knows that. (just in case you've never seen it, here's a picture of mine.) There's also a Santa by Possible Dreams titled A prayer before Departure which is Santa holding the Bible (this is on my Christmas list...hint.hint.)

6. oh let's see...traditions...my sister and I always exchanged our gifts from each other on Christmas Eve, so i let my boys do the same.
7. We watch the Polar Express the day after thanksgiving to kick off the Christmas season and again on Christmas eve.
8. I read 'Twas the night before Christmas the night before Christmas.
9. I started with Andrew several years ago the Gingerbread Project tradition. He has reminded me that we haven't done one yet this year.
10.i'm a last minute shopper and i hate that i'm like that. i just lack the disciplineto start earlier.
11. i love decorating the house. Everyday Richard comes in and comments, "oh, more decorations." i think he's being sarcastic, what do you think?
12.i try to send christmas cards every year, and i usually put a family snapshot in with it, but not this year. moving to texas has thrown me way off track. AND i might add that this is the first Christmas Iwill be away from my dad. My mom is coming here (YEAH) but daddy is staying in NC with my sister.

wow. that was not as easy as i thought it was going to be, but you were right Mylinda, it was fun!

duh!!

i've posted a new entry but it's showing up in the november posts. check it out...4 wheelin'!

Fall into Christmas

We usually enjoy the changin of the seasons in NC and that includes the fall leaves. This year we missed it. So my mom-in-law sent the leaves to us. She usually does this for the other grandchildren in Florida which Andrew has helped her prepare the last few years. So hwne the box came the other day, he knew exactly what it was. It was a beautiful afternoon and the boys had a great time.

We put our tree up over the weekend, but i wouldn't let them decorate it until the first night daddy was home. Plus that gave me some extra time to put the Tree Train on. This is the coolest thing. We found it at Lowes Home Improvement about 2 yrs ago and the boys love it. and yes, the train really goes around the tree and it has real smoke! it's very cool. Any one with little boys that love trains needs one of these. I always liked the thought of the train going around the bottom of the tree, but where in the heck would you put all the presents?
so the boys got to work. Daddy hung one or two and threw several. If you've ever been to a tree-trim party with Richard you know what i'm talking about. i was the hook-er (aaron is too little to put the hooks on his ornaments so i did it for him). all of aaron's were at his eye level and in a the same spot. there are some branches that had 4 or 5 ornaments on each one. I had to spread them out a little. the whole bottom half of the tree was sagging. It may not be aSanta- only tree this year, but it is decorated with love.

trains, trains, and more trains

For those of you who know us well, know that when Andrew was little he loved trains and still does. We started a collection of the ever popular Thomas the Tank Engine wooden trains and track. Aaron has inherited most of it (Andrew pulled out a few of his favorite trains to keep) plus we've added to the collection. My parents bought some track and trains from their preacher, and my mom-in-law bought some from a friend of hers from work. Once we put all three collections together we have a lot of track.

Aaron wanted a track the other day, so i put on my train engineer hat and went to work. i always loved building tracks for Andrew and now i get to for Aaron. i think part of the magic of the wooden train sets is you never build the same track twice. Well, I guess you could but that would be boring. Needless to say, now with all the added pieces of track, this was probably one of the more elaborate tracks i ever built. I just had to document this on film. even Andrew quit watching TV to play on this track.
One of the pieces my parents got in their collection was this crane thing. i hope you can see it in this picture. it has two pieces of track side by side. this is the section i was most proud of. it was very tricky trying to figure out how to get it all to come together and spread back out again. But, I am a professional train engineer, and i am very experienced at building tracks so I got the job done and the boys had a great time. they played for a long time without arguing. and that's saying a lot.

A Historical Visit

i'm catching up on a few things...

Remember the Alamo!
Just incase you forgot, here it is. When karleene was here, one of the things she wanted to do was see some historical things. so on Thanksgiving day, we rented the newest version of The Alamo movie (it had Billy Bob Thorton, Dennis Quaid in it). it was very good. Even Andrew enjoyed it, then on Friday we (karleene, the boys and myself) drove north to San Antonio and visited the Alamo. It was very interesting to see it especially after just watching the movie and having the information fresh on your mind. I think it definitely made an impression on Andrew. Aaron could've cared less. He was more interested in the loose change that people have been throwing in the original irrigation system that is still there. He even told me, "to take my clothes off and go in that water and get me that money." Never mind that it was 40 degrees that day and snowing in Dallas. I don;t think so Aaron!

Another cool thing we saw, completely by accident was the Iwo Jima memorial.















There is a Marine Military school in Harlingen that we saw as we were taking Karleene to the airport to leave for home.
There was a sign for the memorial and as Richard looked to his left he saw the huge statue. so decided to go check it out. Turns out this is the ORIGINAL Iwo Jima memorial statue. whatever material it was made out of wasn't going to withstand the elements in Washington, DC so a bronze cast was made of this one and placed in DC. the original was moved to Harlingen, TX. HOw cool is that. Let me tell you, this thing is huge, but very overwhelming and awesome.

I know these are two things we will definitely be visiting again, especially when my dad comes to visit !

Hello again. Not really much to talk about here, not that much going on. Richard is on a swing shift now which means he goes in at 3:30, is supposed to get off at 12:00 but has at least 2 hours over time so it'll be 2:00 or 3:00 before he gets home. this new schedule really sucks for all of us. i'm so used to getting things done during the day while he's gone, but now he's home and usually sleeping in so i can't really do too much during the day since i don;t want to wake him, then in the evening it's homework, supper, play and bath and bed. so then the boys are in bed and i still can't clean. uugghhh. i'll figure something out, i used to manage a teller line, surely i can manage my own household.

anyway, andrew is doing okay. he had to get a vaccine yesterday. Apparently it was either missed or never required when he was little (at least not in NC). anyway, the dr went ahead a did a physical on him. he's very healthy except he may need glasses. he's not very happy about that, just one more thing to make it harder for him to fit in, at least that's what he thinks. He'll be fine, i'm sure of it. His daddy even told him he didn't have to get big ugly brown ones like I had when i was little (i know Mom, i wanted them to be just like yours. he just likes to give me a hard time). say a little prayer for him if you would.

aaron is funny as ever. his newest thing is that there are monsters in the potty and he won;t go pee-pee unless someone goes with him. i'm not real sure where that came from but it sure was funny when he asked his daddy to fix the potty to get rid of the monsters. Richard didn't know what the heck he was talking about.

As for me, i'm hanging in there. i miss home, family and friends. and as i think about my mom-in-law getting ready for her annual tree-trim party, i realize how blessed we have been to be surrounded by so much love for the past thirteen years. i'm really gonna miss Christmas in NC this year. As much as i am loving this warm weather (you know how i hate the cold), it just doesn't feel like Christmas so i'm having a hard time getting in the mood. hey Karleene, do you think you could send some snow if you get any? on a brighter note, my mom and my nephew are coming for christmas and i am so excited about that. so is andrew. he and jonathan are pretty close despite the difference in age, so i think we'll have a great time.

well, i guess that's about all. like i said, there's not a whole lot of exciting stuff happening right now. hope you all have a great day/evening. may God bless you this Christmas.

Pete 3, mice 0

Well, let me start by prefacing this entry with a short story.

Before we moved to Texas i had lunch with one of my very best friends and she was asking me how my cat, Pete, would do as an indoor cat since he had been mostly an outside cat for nearly 8 years. I made a sick joke of saying that i would got to a pet store, buy some feeder mice to let loose in the apartment so he would still be able to hunt. Guess what? We now have mice!And the best part is they're FREE! I didn't have to pay for Pete to have recreation. But. what the mouse populaltion is learning, we also have Pete! So far they come in but they leave in a little black body bag, literally!

Any way last night was pretty comical...About 4:00 PM, andrew and i were playing Xbox in the livingroom and i heard something in the kitchen. i asked andrew to go see IF Pete were in there (you see, Pete is also a nocturnal cat, he only comes out of hiding from the closet after 9:00 or later). His reponse was, "uh, mommy, i think we have a mouse! i just saw it go through on of the holes on the stove (that would be the whole in the the little silver bowl things that go under the burners)." YEP, it was in my stove. eeewwwhhhh!!!! so, it's 4:00 in the afternoon, there's a mouse in my stove, and my heroic tom cat who has already killed 2 mice is hiding in the closet because its not dark yet. yeah...so i go get the cat, who freaks out because he's out of the closet and it still daylight. as soon as i let him go, whoosh, straight back to the closet.

So now i'm really grossed out and NOT, i repeat, I was NOT about to cook in the kitchen last night. so after aaron woke up from his nap, we left. I took the boys to watch a movie in hopes that Pete would catch the darn mouse while we were gone. but you guessed it, no he didn;t because.....it wasn't after 9:00 PM! So after i got the kids to bed, i carefully took the top of the stove apart and cleaned the best i could. then i left the stove totally apart. the burners were out, the top lifted up, the bottom drawer pulled out, just to make it easier for this great hunting tom cat of mine.

around 11:00 i called it a day. around 11:30 i woke up to this loud noise in the kitchen. i knew it was Pete! and yes he had caught the mouse. what he did next.....well, has any one ever watched a cat hunt and kill its prey? ever wonder where the term "game of cat and mouse" came from?

Pete brought the nasty little kritter into my bedroom and let the thing go! now, it's hiding under my dresser (which is kinda old so the bottom board that should seal the entire dresser off is loose and the mouse crawls up into my dresser and is now in my drawers. i'm really getting irritaed by now. this goes on for a while and i eventually take out all the drawers from my dresser to make easier for this great hunter of wild beasts to catch this little mouse. i even had a flashlight spotlighting the damned little for him. He just layed down in front of the dresser. i guess he was tired from all the prowling. after about 10 minutes of rest, he gets up and persues the mouse again who is now back under the collapsing board on the bottom of my dresser. so Pete goes into the dresser from the front and lays right on top of where the mouse is under the board and scratches and paws for about 10 minutes. He finally got up, went behind the dresser lifter the board with his head and drug the poor dead mouse out from underneath. yep... he crushed to death. Not exactly what i expected, but effective none the less.

it was about 1:30 AM when i finally got to sleep, Richard came home from work at 2:00AM so i was awake again and then had to get up around 6:30 to take andrew to school. No t a very good night sleep, but what a story it makes. i should be in bed now, it's after 11:00, but i had to tell this story.

Needless to say Pete is still my hero! and i am so glad i brought him to texas with me. Other tennants here also have a mice problem, but I've got Pete!

i'll attach a few picts to illustrate our story.

the mouse in my dresser.

here;s my dresser as i'm taking it apart ( i still havent figured out how to rotate the picts)

pete lying down on the job.

pete got a new scratching box for all his hard work and for protecting the home front.