Christmas Tour of Homes

Welcome to my home! (a day late!)

hope you enjoy.

This was the first year that we were able to set up our village since we started the collection about 7 years ago! I know that seems like a long time, but we are a little funny in that we wanted to have EVERY piece before we sat it all up! Well, now we do SO....I give you.....Little Town Of Bethlehem, by Department 56.....you should be able to click on the pictures to see the details! We are amazed at the detail of this village!

There is actually more to the desert scene, I guess I just didn't get it all loaded!

Now on to the living room.....

Our tree....although I am allergic to every tree known to man, we always have a real tree! I just pop the antihistamines! :)

This is the same angel we have had on our tree since our first Christmas together. This will be her 12th Christmas on top of our tree!

Just a few ornaments....we have a wide variety!

The kids fought over who would put this one up....they both miss our dear Pongo!

This tree is a small fake one I had at school. I put it up in the breakfast area and let the kids decorate it!

These two hang under the base of their little tree. They each made these little trees in Mission Friends at church a few weeks ago. They glued Hersey Kisses to the dots, and have taken off one each night, counting down the days to Christmas. I will use it again next year....maybe with a more spiritual meaning though!

And my tour ends with a visit from Santa. He stopped by this past Sunday. The kids were in total shock. The girl just stared at him and played with his beard, and the boy talked nonstop! Reminding Santa that he REALLY wants a Red Rider BB Gun! Santa played along and told him that he would "shoot his eye out!" LOL The great thing about this Santa was that he reminded the kids that the TRUE meaning of Christmas is in Christ, not him and the presents we get. It was really nice to have that come from him and we didn't ask him to say it at all!

And that ends my tour...

Hope you enjoyed.....

Go visit the other 700 + homes over at BooMama's!

Overdue!

Below are some pictures I have been meaning to load for a LONG time now! I am just so busy and overwhelmed with all this new stuff at school that I just haven't had the time. SO...here you are....

Some summer fun with cousin Caleb....He adores Rachel!

Rachel and Timothy's first catch.....and some fries!

Timothy, Rachel and I joined Daddy at Disciple Now this year. Carlton wasn't able to get them their own DNow shirts, so I made them their own.....they loved them....and everyone else thought they were cute. Look at her face!!! LOL

My Boy's on Timothy's first day of school!

Timothy and Rachel....they really do love each other like this A LOT!

I don't do pictures well(I close my eyes all the time), and almost left this one out...but what the heck!

Timothy and his Kindergarten teacher.

There....got it done! Can check it off the list....now on to other stuff!!!

How to DO the WHO do!

Hee Hee......that just sounds funny! AnyWHO......(i'm killin' myself here!!) LOL OKAY....enough with that....on with what I am here for today! A couple of you that read the post below wanted to know how we accomplished this great up do, so let me tell you, it was super easy.

Here's what you need:
1. Plastic cup (sized to match the amount of hair you have)
2. Your own hair (hee hee)
3. 1 scrunci

To accomplish such stylish do, simply brush some hair forward, place the cup in the center of the top of your head, bring hair up from all sides and secure with the scrunci!

On a small child you might try those little Dixie cups....would make for a smaller do, but would be just as much fun!

Now was that easy or what!!! So, now go make your WHO do!

Girls Night Out and My Ballerina

Well, it has been a week and a half now and I am FINALLY getting some pictures on here from our first ever GNO! I guess it really should have been called GNI since we stayed IN all night. Anyway....for some reason most of the pictures I took came out too dark, so these were some of the better ones. Just showing some of the fun we had.

My princess stayed with us! She was a hoot..... I think in this picture the time was about 12:30 and yes she was still running!!

Here she is eating her "mushmellow". That's what she calls them!

Some of the girls wanted to straighten my hair. You know it has only been curly since having both kids, mainly since Rachel! Anyhow, as they were doing it, someone thought it would be funny to turn me into a WHO. So with they accomplished that with help if a plastic cup and a scrunci. Then in the picture below is one of our girls....she has long hair too and a lot of it, so they did the same to her!

These two were a hoot, you'll see their handy work below. They decided to tape two of the girls that went to sleep to the floor! I have to say I did have a little to do with that....helping at least!

These were some other helpers! They had the tape ready when we came back for it!

Displaying their handy work!

This is the "All Night Crew" Not one of us went to sleep. Oh, there is also the one behind the camera.

My princess being woke up to head home! Would you believe that she stayed up til 2:30!!! I am not joking, that girl is a party animal!

After we got home Rachel and I went straight to my bed and slept til 12:00! Could have slept longer, but my dear hubby just had to mow the grass!!! LOL

The pictures below are of Rachel. I had to practice getting all of her hair slicked back for recital in a couple weeks. SO, with the help of water and some hair glue, we got it back. For some reason she wasn't wanting to give me a smile, so she was trying to frown!

Then after I snapped a few shots of her, she wanted to take one with her "brodder"! Look at him all beat up! He is ALL BOY!!!! He never goes a day without some kind of scratch or bruise!

Pictures

Ok, I was FINALLY able to load all these pictures! WHEW....it took a while! As you can tell I have not had my camera with me at work in a while. These pictures are all from the month of April.

Come back tomorrow for an update on my doctor's visit. I wanted to wait till I took Rachel for her hearing check this afternoon. That way I could post them both together. Oh, Timothy's eye appointment was scheduled this morning for Tuesday, 29th of April...next week.

So, let's get started.....

These first few are from Tables On Parade. The women of our church all decorate tables and the men serve us dinner. We have special music and a speaker that night as well. This is my table. Simple, just like me! :) There were some AMAZING tables for sure....However, I didn't get pictures of them all, there were so many and I was too busy getting mine together and hosting it as well.

Here are the kids after we finally got home that night. They were dying to smell the roses in the car. So as soon as we got home, just barely in the back door, Timothy insisted that I put them on the floor so he could smell them!

Now, this next set of pictures are just a sample of the ones I have from the Sage conference at Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler. If you all haven't heard of Sage, then go check them out! Great girls ministry! The theme for the weekend was Simplicity: feedom from chaos. The talked about ways to simplify your life so that you have more time to focus on God and your relationship with Him. They also do a fashion show/slide show of ways to dress/not to dress. The girls we took had a great time....although, several of them didn't even want to go!

This is Nolen. He was our bus driver. You can tell he was very excited about the weekend! LOL I snapped this picture and told him that it WOULD be posted somewhere at some point. So, Nolen, here it is! (He said I was wrong for taking this shot!)

Merritt Johnston is the main speaker. She is awesome. The girls loved her.

A time for praisin' and worshipin' our Lord with the ALL GIRLS Sage band! Our girls thought they "rocked!" Megan Charles was the "lead" singer for the group. She is on staff at Green Acres as their Girls Minister.

Rachel's 1st Tea Party! She had a blast....well...to be honest, she was very shy and reserved for the whole thing..... They had princess dresses for all of them to wear and then they had two young girls there doing hair and makeup....Rachel insisted that she sit in my lap while they "dolled her up". Then she made her way to the table. The mother of this birthday girl had gone to different garage sales and thrift stores/antique shops to find (a ton of) tea cups and saucers. They were all cute! She put them all on the table at each place setting and then the girls got to choose which one to sit at; this is the one that Rachel chose.

The special prize for the party was that Cinderella came! The girls were so excited! Rachel finally smiled! But she was still hesitant of Cinderella until Mommy talked to her too.

Now for my little MAN....well, Sunday before last he decided that he wanted to wear a suit with a tie just like Daddy does. We had this coat, shirt and tie that someone had given him a little over a year ago that had been hanging in his closet. It HAD been too big for him, but not anymore! However, the shirt would not button around the neck! It fit him perfect everywhere else, but would NOT button around the neck. He was very upset about it but still determined to wear the tie....so I did the best I could....I clipped that little Veggie Tale clip-on tie to the next button down.

What's a Momma to do on a Sunday morning as she is trying to walk out the door (already running 15 minutes late!!) and her little man is upset!

Isn't he handsome!!! Sunburn (from t-ball and the first "warm/sunny Saturday in months), bummed chin and all!

Well, that's it....actually there were many other pictures to share....but these were just a few to highlight the month so far! (there is still more of it to come...)