handsful

As much as I prefer to post these pictures one by one, so that I can have captions for each….posting them together, in an album format, actually gets the pictures ON the blog.  Otherwise, I fear it would never happen.

(There are two group pictures near the end…the one taken outside is my dad’s family; the one taken inside is Randy’s mom, Paul, and all the grandkids.  They are out of order, and I have NO CLUE how to get them back in order.  Ah, technology.)

The first pic shows the kids with Randy’s dad and Kathy…they came a week before Christmas, went to one of the kids Testify concerts, we had lunch, and did presents.

The second one is from Christmas eve, when my parents came over to do lunch and presents.  Their surprise for the bigs was season tickets to Carowinds!

From there, we took some pictures of us all dressed up for Christmas eve services at church…we tend to get a little silly at that point, since Christmas is like the NEXT day!

And then…pics of our morning of opening presents together.  The kids let us sleep in, and we finally got down to it at 10am.  So nice.

Two days after Christmas, we headed west to have family get-togethers.  First, lunch with my dad’s family at my parents house.  Loved seeing folks I’d not seen in a couple of years, especially my Great Aunt Jean (who reminds me so much of my Grandmom).  The picture of Ethan playing the guitar…that’s my dad’s guitar, that he’s had since I was little.  So cool that EJ was playing it :)

The next day, we went to Randy’s mom’s house…it’s always a little wacky over there.  And, fun.  Randy and his brother love to “torture” their mom during picture time.  And, Ann…sorry, but that pic of the five of us?  You weren’t smiling in any of them!  Ha…

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

As is the new norm these days, we were a tad late in getting our tree this year because we had to find a time where ALL 8 of us would be able to go together.

Mission nearly impossible.

But, we squeezed it in between a big Testify concert and the littles Testify Too concert.  And, as you can see, we had a couple of helpers too….Daniel and Elaina :)

We found just the right one, dropped off the littles, Payton, and Elaina at the concert.  The others drove home, and Randy and I dropped the tree off at the house.

Run back to the concert.  Enjoy the concert (they did great!)…

Gather everyone up, and head back home to decorate.

Trying out the ladders.  If these were our first kids, we’d probably have a heart attack, thinking they might fall.

But, we don’t scare easily anymore.

Clark (Griswald), wrapping about a zillion lights all around AND inside the tree.  Cause, there has to be DEPTH of light.  It’s a must.

First ornament pictures.  Another must.

Given we started kinda late, it was late when we finished.  Or, shall I say early?  12:30am, I believe.

And, I don’t do late.  Yawn.

The kids were getting silly, too.

House decorated.  Tree up.  Lights in trees outside.  Presents (99.9%) bought.  Presents (67.5%) wrapped.

Merry Christmas :)

Where did it go?

We just finished the first week of December.  Eeek.

In the interest of just wanting to catch up, below you will find lots of photos.

We loved our day trip to Boone, where we hiked up Elk Knob in the snow.  Some of us in shoes that had no business trudging through deep snow and slush.  Ahem.  We had a great time, nonetheless.

There are also pictures of the Testify drama team at our house…with Randy writing and directing the plays, we held two practices for the drama alone, and had a blast doing it.

Pics of Testify Too (the Jr. age choir that Lainey and Dylan are in) in their first Christmas concert.  Too cute.

I wasn’t able to get photos of the first Testify concert, but I’ll get some at an upcoming concert for sure.  Stay tuned.

I’ve also got before and after shots of our house painting project.  I should say our friend Doug’s painting project, since he did all the work! And, did an amazing job, too.  We LOVE it.

Finally, pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner here (just us this year), and our traditional Thanksgiving afternoon trip to our quaint little downtown for family pics.  It was COLD, but we had to grin and bear it.  Heh.

Enjoy :)

Elk Knob trip…

The fabulous Testify drama cast, 2014

Lainey and Dylan are in Testify Too (1st-6th graders) and they had their first concert.  Lainey plays a townsperson, and Dylan plays King Herod!

Let’s see what else…oh yeah, our switch from drab beige to gray paint!

I know the bottom wall looks kinda blue, but it’s really not.  After sweating choosing the color, I’m THRILLED with how it looks.  The browns in our furniture, etc. really pop against the gray.

Lastly, we did Thanksgiving this year with just us.  We still got the big turkey, and I cooked all the usual sides that are totally expected.  We ate (too much) and then headed downtown for our picture session.  We started this a couple of years ago, and I just love it.  We have so much fun running around the almost empty streets, finding fun places to take pics.  It was a bummer that we couldn’t get a full family shot (no one else with us, and couldn’t find the tripod!), but we got some good shots, I think.

Now?  On to all the fun and blessings of Christmas…

As our big kids get bigger, Halloween is changing.

Lainey and Dylan are, of course, still full-out loving the whole thing…dressing up and candy.  What’s not to like?

Dylan, for the 4th straight year, went super hero again.  Captain America!

On the other hand, Lainey had NO clue what she wanted to do.  Weeks ago, we bought her a big, curly blond wig, thinking we’d build a costume around that.  That never happened.  So, pretty much last minute, we pulled together a brainiac nerd costume.  Daniel even let her borrrow one of his school books for a great prop!

Now, Abbey.  My “Peter Pan” child, still loves to dress up.  She used two dresses and altered them into this one dress and headpiece to be a spider queen.  Add the red wig and a great make-up job, and voila.  No trick-or-treating for her, though.  She went to Daniel’s house and they just walked around his neighborhood.  I don’t have a photo of Daniel, but I think he was basically the spider queen’s assistant.  Maybe.

Marley and her friend Kylie both did their make-up and went to a local farm that was having a haunted woods event.  No pic.  Maybe I’ll get one that Marley took, and add it here later.  Marley did both make-ups, turning Kylie into a lovely deer and adding a creepy crooked mouth to herself.

The boys?  They went to their friend Trevor’s house.  I’m told they went to Wal-Mart and bought candy.  It’s all about the sugar.

Because we don’t live in a neighborhood, we always have to crash someone else’s.  We parked at the neighborhood pool, and joined in with the other zillion Elsa and Olaf’s walking around.  Ran into some friends, which was fun.  Then, it started to lightly sprinkle.  No big deal.  We kept going.

Till the sprinkles turned into pelting cold rain, and we realized we didn’t know how to get back to the pool.

Thankfully, we found a guy who lived there and knew how to get us to the pool.  Even walked with us in the rain to get there.

God bless him.  My off-brand Uggs are NOT waterproof and my toes were starting to splash around in there.

We made it home, got into dry clothes, and watched L and D trade candy.  They gave me their Snickers, and gave Randy a few Reece’s.

And, with that, another Halloween is over.

On to Thanksgiving!

How’s that for a creative title? Maybe not…

A couple of weeks ago, Abbey, Marley, and Ethan had their voice recitals. They’ve been taking lessons from Mrs. Susan, who is also the director for Testify.

They chose two songs, one was their choice of any song, and the other had to be an older song prior to 1990. Footloose (old version), It’s a Wonderful World, and Desperado were A, M and E’s choices. Loved it!

The whole group did an impromptu version of Let It Go…I especially loved watching Ethan suffer through that!

Two days later, it was Father’s Day. The kids had a concert that morning, and then it was all about Randy. What did he wanna do?

A little lake time.

It was a perfect afternoon on the water, just what he wanted.

We’ve been busy doing fun stuff.  It’s been Spring Break, afterall.

First off, the boys had 4 friends over for 3 days/2 nights.  Lots of running around in the woods (in the rain), games on the trampoline, tent camping in our open field, and a TON of food now gone.

I’m just about recovered from it all.

We also colored eggs.  The pic above is from our experiment.  Apparently, using shaving cream and food coloring is the way to go, so we tried it.

They turned out great.  Here are two of them still in shaving cream.  After they chill in the fridge for a while, you use paper towels to wipe them off.  I think my “after” photo is on my phone, I’ll post that later.

Field trip time!  Marley tagged along as we took Lainey and Dylan to a farm owed by another homeschool family.  They held and played with lots of animals, saw a just-hatched chick, rode their horse, and had a fun egg hunt.

Lainey holds Peggy Lou :)

Next up…Annual Easter hunt at Gram’s house on Saturday.

We had a couple of extras join in this year.  We brought Kylie and Daniel, and Caleb’s girlfriend Anna came as well.

Gram and her grands

So many watchers this year…we’re down to only 3 egg hunters this year, and next year it’ll just be Lainey and Dylan.

The big kids read their first clue for the hunt…

Finally, it was Easter Sunday…

Payton, get outta our shot…

And, that covers  our Spring Break.  I think I somehow missed the concept of “break”…but we had a blast.

Last night, we had the pleasure of attending a Chinese New Year event at nearby Davidson College.  The Asian student community within the college puts this on every year, and it’s so fun.  Chinese food, dancers, singers, dragon and lion dances, face painting, and….a fantastic fireworks display right on the quad.

I only had my phone, so there are only a few pics.  I’ve got to get back in the camera habit.

We were THIS close to the fireworks…ash was falling in our hair and in our eyes.  lol…

Chinese New Year is officially on the 31st.  I see us finding a new Chinese restaurant to celebrate again :)